Iranian president says Israel tried to assassinate him

The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview released on Monday that Israel, which last month fought a 12-day war with Iran, had attempted to assassinate him by bombarding an area in which he was holding a meeting.

“They did try, yes. They acted accordingly, but they failed,” Pezeshkian told the US media personality Tucker Carlson in response to a question on whether he believed Israel had tried to kill him. Carlson’s interview, via an interpreter, is one the first interviews the Iranian president has given with western media since the war.

“It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting … they tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks from Farsi, without specifying whether the alleged attempt was during the recent war.

Donald Trump has already said he blocked the Israelis from trying to assassinate the 86-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who remained in hiding for nearly three weeks only to attend a religious ceremony in Tehran at the weekend, an event that was greeted with excitement and relief by government loyalists. He had previously made three video appearances looking pale, if defiant.

A move to kill Pezeshkian, elected president last summer, would be a qualitatively different step by Israel and underline the extent to which it was not just seeking to weaken Iran’s military leadership and cadre of nuclear scientists, but seeking to destroy the political leadership as well. At times during the 12-day war Donald Trump spoke in favour of regime change, but seemed to have backed off as the campaign persisted. He now talks in terms of securing a permanent deal with Iran, but the detail of what the US is willing to offer Iran is light.

Israel claims it killed more than 30 senior security officials and 11 senior nuclear scientists to deliver a major blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions during the 12-day war. It says it has, jointly with the US, wiped out Iran’s three main nuclear sites.

Both Pezeskhian and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have shown little restraint in being seen in public, attending funerals inside Iran as well as travelling abroad. Pezezshkian went to a summit in Azerbaljan, while Araghchi has been to Brazil, Egypt and Moscow.

Pezeshkian also told Carlson: “We did not start this war and we do not want this war to continue in any way.”

He insisted his slogan for his presidential campaign had been to create internal national unity and to foster friendship with its neighbours.

During the interview with Carlson, Pezeshkian said his country has “no problem” restarting nuclear talks, provided that trust can be re-established between the two countries.

“We see no problem in re-entering the negotiations,” he said.

“There is a condition … for restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the United States again? We re-entered the negotiations, then how can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack us?”

He denied that Iran had been involved in a campaign to assassinate Trump.

Asked if the IAEA, the nuclear inspectorate, would be allowed to return, Pezeshkian replied: “We still do not know the extent of the damage caused to the nuclear sites. … Access is currently not possible because they have been severely affected. Once access is restored, we can consider inspections. The IAEA’s silence in the face of these attacks, which are contrary to international law, has sown mistrust among the Iranians.”

AFP contributed to this report