{"id":227273,"date":"2026-01-08T13:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/227273\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T13:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:17:09","slug":"iran-ready-to-fight-back-if-us-or-israel-attacks-again-says-foreign-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/227273\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran ready to fight back if US or Israel attacks again, says foreign minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT — Iran does not want war with Israel or the United States, but is ready to fight back if attacked again, the country\u2019s foreign minister said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Speaking upon arrival in Beirut, Abbas Araghchi<\/a> told reporters that Iran is also ready for negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program<\/a> as long as the talks are based on mutual respect rather than \u201cdictation\u201d by Washington.<\/p>\n

Araghchi\u2019s comments came as many fear that close U.S. ally Israel will target Iran again as it did during the 12-day war<\/a> it launched against Tehran in June. Israel killed a slew of top military officials and nuclear scientists, and the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica and Israel have tested their attack on Iran and this attack and strategy faced extreme failure,\u201d the Iranian official said in Beirut at the start of a two-day visit to Lebanon. \u201cIf they repeat it, they will face the same results.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are ready for any choice. We don\u2019t desire a war but we are ready for it,\u201d Araghchi said.<\/p>\n

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> reimposed a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign on Iran in an effort to block its development of nuclear weapons. The campaign included U.S. led strikes on three critical Iranian enrichment facilities in June.<\/p>\n

Araghchi said Tehran is ready for \u201cnegotiations but I say that the negotiations should be based on mutual respect and mutual interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that once the Americans reach the outcome that constructive and positive negotiations rather than ordering dictation are the framework, then at that time the results of the these negotiations become fruitful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity \u2014 a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels \u2014 after Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from Tehran\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Tehran long has maintained its atomic program is peaceful, though the West and the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, say Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.<\/p>\n

In late December, Trump warned Iran<\/a> that the U.S. could carry out further military strikes if the country attempts to reconstitute its nuclear program as he held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT — Iran does not want war with Israel or the United States, but is ready to fight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[124208,120,127,40937,122,42,43,238,40,38,41,39,121,12526,126],"class_list":["post-227273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-124208","tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","tag-article","tag-bombings","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}