Nuclear Iran

[Jimbuna]

Jordan in last-ditch effort to prevent Iran retaliating for Haniyeh killing

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has made a rare visit to Iran in a last-ditch effort to persuade it to hold back from attacking Israel in response to the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last week.

The western ally with a large Palestinian population is facing a tough balancing act as it faces domestic calls to break off relations with Tel Aviv and to stop protecting it after shooting down Iranian missiles aimed at Israel earlier this year.

The visit looks doomed to fail given that Iran insisted on Sunday that there was no room for compromise and that it would make a decisive response to the assassination.

In the previous Iranian attack on Israel in April, Jordan shot down some Iranian missiles flying over its airspace insisting it would not allow its country to become a battlefield for other conflicts. It also gave the French navy permission to deploy radars.
But the kingdom is also facing mass demonstrations in support of Gaza and is furious with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Natanyahu, for assassinating Haniyeh in what it has condemned as “an escalatory crime and flagrant violation of international law”. Israel has refused to officially comment on Haniyeh’s assassination, but its role is widely acknowledged.

More than half the Jordanian population is Palestinian or of Palestinian descent.

Iran insists the assassination has crossed too many red lines and is calling for a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), at which Tehran would put pressure on Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to adopt sanctions against Israel.

Safadi’s visit to Iran is the first visit by a Jordanian foreign minister for two decades, and reflects the failure of a phone call between the two sides to find a diplomatic solution.

His condemnations of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has been strikingly vivid in recent months. “The Israeli government acts in a way that reflects their racism, extremism and rejection of the right of the Palestinians to live like any other people on this Earth,” he said recently. But Jordan is hugely dependent on the US for its security, and will rejoin the April alliance to minimise the impact of any Iranian assault.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...da815384&ei=51