Watan-An official from the Saudi royal family, who was not named, claimed to Israeli public radio “KAN” that his country intercepts “any suspicious object” entering Saudi airspace, in a clear reference to the alleged role of the kingdom in shooting down Iranian drones headed towards Israel on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia had issued a statement urging all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to spare the region and its peoples the risks of war.
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in its first response to Iran’s attack on Israel, expressed deep concern about the military escalation in the region and the danger of its repercussions.
According to the Times of Israel, the Saudi official also criticized Iran for “planning a war in Gaza” to sabotage the progress it had made in normalizing relations with Israel, as reported by “KAN”.
The same source quoted the official as saying: “Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, and it should have been stopped a long time ago.”
#بيان | تعرب وزارة الخارجية عن بالغ قلق المملكة العربية السعودية جرّاء تطورات التصعيد العسكري في المنطقة وخطورة انعكاساته، وتدعو كافّة الأطراف للتحلّي بأقصى درجات ضبط النفس وتجنيب المنطقة وشعوبها مخاطر الحروب. pic.twitter.com/xoQ9UwQrjC
— وزارة الخارجية 🇸🇦 (@KSAMOFA) April 14, 2024
The drone attack marked the first time Iran directly launched a large-scale military attack on Israel, despite decades of hostility dating back to the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In a statement carried by the state-run Iranian news agency IRNA, the Revolutionary Guards acknowledged launching “dozens of drones and missiles towards the occupied territories and Zionist regime sites.”
Biden Monitors Situation
Biden had cut short a weekend trip to his beach house in Delaware to return to the White House and monitor the situation.
Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli military said it had canceled schools and restricted public gatherings to no more than 1,000 people as a precautionary measure.
The head of the U.S. Central Command, General Eric Correll, visited Israel in recent days to coordinate with Israel on Iranian threats.
In recent times, Iran has largely avoided directly attacking Israel, despite targeted killings of nuclear scientists and sabotage campaigns on Iranian nuclear sites. Iran has targeted Israeli or Jewish-linked sites through proxy forces.
The war Israel waged on Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been a cause of escalating tensions in the Middle East for the past decade, and any new attack threatens to escalate this conflict into a wider regional war.