https://arab.news/zyhjk
On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered what sounded like an olive branch. “I apologize to neighboring countries, we have no enmity toward them,” he said, adding that Iran “must work with its neighbors to guarantee security and peace.”
The apology was designed to ease the strain on a government buckling under the weight of its own military adventurism — strikes launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian armed forces against Gulf Cooperation Council member states that had explicitly refused to allow their territory to be used in the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran.
Pezeshkian’s olive branch came packaged with a concrete announcement: the “interim leadership council” had resolved to suspend attacks on neighboring countries unless strikes on Iran were launched from their soil. Gulf capitals took notice. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that GCC states had been working collectively on a joint response affirming their desire to see the Iranian president’s words translated into action. “While we were holding those discussions with our GCC colleagues,” he said pointedly, “those countries were being attacked.”
