Israel's strikes violated national sovereignty, territorial integrity of Qatar: Iran envoy Elahi

Iran's Ambassador to India, Iraj Elahi, has said Israel's recent air strikes on Doha targeting Hamas leaders ''directly violated the national sovereignty and territorial integrity'' of Qatar and ''threatened its national security''.

Israel last week carried out strikes on the Qatari capital, the latest in a series of attacks it launched against Syria, Iran and Lebanon, triggering global outrage. In an interaction with PTI Videos on Sunday, Elahi alleged, ''This is the third time in the past year that Israel has directly attacked regional groups or leaders, who have gone to the negotiating table for peaceful conflict resolution.'' This has occurred in Lebanon, Iran and now in Qatar, he said. The Iranian envoy added that ''the meaning of attacking the negotiating table is clear: Israel does not believe in peaceful conflict resolution and sees negotiations as an opportunity to weaken or eliminate the opponents''.

On the strikes on Doha, he said the attack ''carried out by the Israeli regime'' has ''directly violated the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of an Arab country in the Persian Gulf and threatened its national security''.

''Repeated attacks on the negotiating table show that for Israel, negotiations are nothing more than a trap,'' he alleged. Elahi also warned of a regional fallout of the Doha incident, portraying Israel as a ''threat to order and stability in West Asia''. The attack, he claimed, has sparked ''major concern among the Arab countries in the region, and may prompt them to take the Israeli threat more seriously'', potentially derailing the Abraham Accords -- the 2020 US-brokered normalisation deals between Israel and several Arab states.

''The attack has shown that security and defence cooperation with the US does not guarantee a country's safety, because America never abandons its proxy in the region,'' Elahi argued. Another important lesson from this ''attack'' is that the region needs an ''indigenous security mechanism, and regional countries have to cooperate with each other to face the challenges posed by Israel'', Elahi said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)