Iran says 'low' possibility of return to war with US

TEHRAN: Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday said a return to war with the United States was unlikely, while warning that the Islamic republic stood ready against any attack.The statement came a day after Iran accused the US of breaching the ceasefire in place since April, and warned it was ready to retaliate after the most serious strikes since the truce took effect.In Lebanon, where violence has far from ceased despite a truce in Israel's war with Hezbollah, Israeli strikes killed 31 people on Tuesday, four of them children, according to the Lebanese health ministry.The Middle East war erupted in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, spreading swiftly across multiple fronts and engulfing the region while throwing global energy markets into chaos."The possibility of war is low because of the enemy's weakness, the armed forces are lying in wait with full magazines," said Mohammad Akbarzadeh, deputy political chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying."Do not doubt that we will turn the area from Chabahar to Mahshahr into a graveyard for aggressors," he said, naming places at each end of Iran's lengthy southern coast.Iran and the US have for weeks been engaged in a war of words as they negotiate a deal with mediation efforts led by Pakistan.With no clear winner in the war, neither side appears ready to compromise on the key sticking points in negotiations, which include the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear programme.Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that is vital to global energy flows, in retaliation for the war, while the US responded with a counterblockade of Iranian ports.Stock markets were mixed on Wednesday, with guarded optimism that the US and Iran could reach a deal.Iranian state media had reported blasts in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, and the Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday its forces downed a US drone entering its airspace and fired at an F-35 fighter jet."The US terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire... has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region," the Iranian foreign ministry said.It added that Tehran "will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation," without elaborating.Hours earlier, CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins had announced the new American strikes on Iran."US forces conducted self-defence strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces," Hawkins said.He gave few details of the attacks and said only that the targets included missile launch sites and boats trying to "emplace mines".In a statement marking the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Tehran's supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared Washington was losing its influence in the Middle East and warned countries in the region to stop hosting bases from which the US could launch attacks.The United States, he said in a written statement, "in addition to no longer having any safe haven in the region for aggression and the establishment of military bases, is moving further and further away from its former position with each passing day".Despite the strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that a peace deal remained within reach, while insisting that the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened "one way or the other".In southern Lebanon, Israel carried out strikes on Tuesday that Beirut's health ministry said killed 31 people, including at least four children.Iran has demanded that any peace accord apply to Lebanon, where an April 17 truce has failed to stop fighting that began when militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in early March.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to "crush" Hezbollah, and an Israeli military official told AFP the following day that the country's forces were expanding their ground operations deeper inside Lebanon.Work on a peace deal between Washington and Tehran is still ongoing, with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB saying a top delegation returned from a two-day visit to Qatar on Tuesday while Iran said it was finalising a 14-point framework for a deal on ending the war.In a telephone conversation with Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country was "ready to reach a respectful framework to end the war," according to IRIB.