TEHRAN -- Iran will respond promptly to any threat against its security, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday, after the United States, the occupying regime of Israel and Britain blamed Tehran for an attack on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman.
Tehran has denied any involvement in the attack on Thursday in which two crew members - a Briton and a Romanian - were killed.
The United States and Britain said on Sunday they would work with their allies to respond to the attack on the Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned petroleum product tanker managed by Zionist-owned Zodiac Maritime.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the incident as “clearly an unacceptable and outrageous attack on commercial shipping”.
“Iran should face up to the consequences of what they’ve done,” Johnson told reporters on Monday.
Britain summoned the Iranian ambassador on Monday. Later, Iran summoned the British Charge d’ Affaires and Romania’s top envoy in Tehran over their countries’ “accusations against the Islamic Republic”.
“Iran has no hesitation in protecting its security and national interests and will respond promptly and strongly to any possible adventure,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
The U.S. Navy, which was escorting the tanker with the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, said on Saturday that early indications “clearly pointed” to a drone attack.
Zionist premier Naftali Bennett had accused Tehran of “trying to shirk responsibility” for the attack. The occupying regime’s foreign minister said on Sunday the incident deserved a harsh response.
An unidentified Iranian official told Iran’s Nournews news agency earlier that Tehran considered “the threats of Western officials and the Zionist regime to be more of a propaganda gesture”.
“And Washington and London will be directly responsible for the consequences,” the official told Nournews, which is close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
Israeli newspaper Kan reported on Sunday that Tel Aviv had received a “green light” from Washington and London to carry out a “response” to the attack.
According to Iran’s Nournews news agency, the accusations against Iran come despite the fact that no evidence or a single proof has so far been provided against the Islamic Republic.
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “Upon review of the available information, we are confident that Iran conducted this attack, which killed two innocent people, using one-way explosive UAVs.”
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also reflected on the matter, saying that the “unlawful and callous” attack had highly likely been carried out by Iran using one or more drones.
“Although the statements made by Blinken and Raab are in line with their Iranophobia project to impose their excessive demands in negotiations on [the revival of Iran’s] nuclear deal, they are also indicative of West’s extreme weakness in the area of intelligence and are aimed at creating a new crisis to help them meet their political goals,” Nournews said.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated its willingness to revive the 2015 nuclear pact with Iran which his predecessor abandoned in 2018, but he is showing a propensity to retain key elements of the sanctions the former U.S. regime imposed on Iran as leverage for pressure.
The Nournews noted that Western countries’ false expression of concern about undermining of maritime security comes despite the fact that both the United States and the UK have many cases of piracy on their records.
“They have also turned a blind eye to the Zionist regime’s acts of terror against other countries and its frequent acts of mischief aimed at making shipping lines unsafe,” the report noted.