Jordan will not be a battlefield for Iran or Israel, foreign minister warns

CAIRO (Reuters) – Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Saturday that the kingdom would not be a battlefield for Iran or Israel, as the region braces for a possible new wave of attacks by Tehran and its allies following last week’s killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We will not be a battlefield for Iran or Israel. We informed the Iranians and the Israelis that we will not allow anyone to violate our airspace and risk the safety of our citizens,” the Jordanian foreign minister said in an interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV.

“We will intercept anything that passes through our airspace or think that it constitutes a threat to us or our citizens.”

In April, Jordan, which lies between Iran and Israel, said it intercepted flying objects that entered its airspace as Tehran launched explosive drones and fired missiles at Israel in the first direct retaliatory attack of its kind.

After that attack, which was launched in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compounds in Syria, Jordanian, Iraqi and Turkish officials each said Iran had provided them with some early warning of their action.

Iran has repeatedly vowed to “punish” Israel since the assassination of Ismail Haniyehthe political leader of Iran-backed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Tehran on July 31. Iran and Hamas blamed Israel for the killing.

Israel has not claimed or denied responsibility for the killing, which has fueled concerns that the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip could spill into a wider Middle East conflict.

Those concerns have also been stoked by the killing of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs hours before the assassination of Haniyeh.

(Reporting by Jaidaa Taha and Enas al Ashry; Editing by Alex Richardson)