TEHRAN, March 23. /TASS/. Middle East states keep coming up with de-escalation solutions, but they should be addressed to the United States since it was Washington that unleashed the war on Iran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
"Indeed, these initiatives put forward by regional countries to reduce tensions and our response to all of them is obvious - we are not the side that started this war, and all of these requests should be addressed to Washington," Mehr news agency quoted a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry as saying.
On March 21, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would destroy a number of Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not fully reopened to navigation within 48 hours.
In response, Iran’s General Staff warned that its forces would carry out retaliatory strikes on US energy and information infrastructure in the region if Washington targets power plants on the territory of the Islamic Republic.
The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February·28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.