Israel’s targeted killings of officials and scientists were “clear instances of state terrorism,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a letter to the UN Security Council requesting an emergency meeting.
In the letter obtained by The Associated Press, he said Iran affirms its right to self-defense under the UN Charter.
“This right is non-negotiable,” Araghchi said. “Israel will come to deeply regret this reckless aggression and the grave strategic miscalculation it has made.”
The Iranian minister urged the Security Council, which will meet in New York on Friday, to “take urgent and concrete measures to hold the Israeli regime fully accountable for its crimes.”
Israel launched a wave of strikes across Iran on Friday that targeted its nuclear program and military sites, killing at least two top military officers and raising the prospect of an all-out war between the two bitter adversaries. It appeared to be the most significant attack Iran has faced since its 1980s war with Iraq.
The strikes came amid simmering tensions over Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and appeared certain to trigger a reprisal. In its first response, Iran fired more than 100 drones at Israel. Israel said the drones were being intercepted outside its airspace, and it was not immediately clear whether any got through.
Israeli leaders cast the attack as necessary to head off an imminent threat that Iran would build nuclear bombs, though it remains unclear how close the country is to achieving that.
For years, Israel had threatened such a strike and successive American administrations had sought to prevent it, fearing it would ignite a wider conflict across the Middle East and possibly be ineffective at destroying Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear program.
