Extracts: Political elite under pressure from variety of sources
Diplomatically, the Iranian foreign ministry will also be listening to the advice from the region, especially from Saudi Arabia, with which it is trying to rebuild ties
Iran will be pleased with the messages of solidarity from across the Gulf including Oman, Riyadh, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, signs that the country’s recent diplomatic push in the region has paid dividends
Such public displays of solidarity are not automatic between Iran and its Arab neighbours
“We are very concerned by the flagrant violation of aggression on Iran this morning. Thankfully, the damage appears limited and we dearly hope there are no casualties
“It’s time for the world to wake up to the urgent need to address the root causes of this crisis, above all Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinian lands”
The Jordanian army stressed that it had not allowed Israel to use its airspace
Some of this Arab support however is likely to be contingent on Iran not escalating the crisis
It was noticeable that neither Saudi nor the UAE named Israel in their condemnatory statements
Hardliners in Tehran in turn will be asking,
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what this show of regional solidarity represents in practice and whether Iran’s best route to security remains as they have always insisted, in restoring the battered “axis of resistance”
On the military side, daybreak allowed Iran and open source experts to survey the scale of the damage, including the death of two Iranian army soldiers, even if the government ordered Iranians not to upload pictures