External Affairs Ministry has said Iran’s air strikes in Pakistan are a matter between Iran and Pakistan. In response to media queries regarding the airstrikes, Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that so far as India is concerned, New Delhi has an uncompromising position of zero tolerance towards terrorism. He said India understands actions that countries take in their self-defense.
“Pakistan has decided to recall its ambassador from Iran and that the Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan who is currently visiting Iran may not return for the time being,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said while addressing a press briefing in Islamabad.
“Pakistan reserves the right to respond to this illegal act. The responsibility for the consequences will lie squarely with Iran”, spokesperson Zahra Baloch said in a statement read out on state-owned broadcaster PTV, reported Reuters.
Pakistan said the airspace violation on January 16, which Iranian state media said, came as Iranian missiles targeted two bases of the militant group Jaish al Adl, had resulted in the deaths of two children.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian said it hit militants in “missile and drone” strikes, saying no Pakistani national was targeted. Pakistan has not confirmed the nature of the violation or the location of the strikes.
Pakistan and Iran have in the past had rocky relations, but the strikes are the highest-profile cross-border intrusion in recent years.
The attacks in Pakistan were carried out a day after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched missiles into Iraq’s Kurdistan region at what it called an Israeli “spy headquarters” and at alleged ISIS-linked targets in Syria, the report said.
The strikes come amid concerns about the escalation of a conflict that has spread through the Middle East since the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas began on Oct. 7, with Iran’s allies also entering the fray from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
“In response to the recent atrocities of the Zionist regime, causing the killing of commanders of the Guards and the Axis of Resistance … one of the main Mossad espionage headquarters in Iraq’s Kurdistan region was destroyed with ballistic missiles,” the Guards said in a statement.