Middle East War: Israel signals conditional openness to halt hostilities

New Delhi: Israel on Monday signalled openness to halting hostilities if Iran were to alter its stance and said that it still preferred a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.

"We are always for diplomacy," Israel's ambassador to India Reuven Azar told select reporters in New Delhi as the war entered the 17th day. "We are always for diplomacy. Unfortunately, we exhausted diplomacy to the extent that we had to take military action. We hope that diplomacy will be relevant again as a result of our military action."

Also Read: Middle East war: Israel approves emergency military funding as Iran war rages


He said Israel had been in touch with multiple diplomatic channels in recent days, including the US, its partners in West Asia and some nations with which it does not maintain formal diplomatic ties.

Azar said that through military action "we've managed to degrade Iran's launching capabilities" to a large extent. "Right now, we are controlling the skies of Iran," he said.

The Israeli envoy said that the purpose of launching military strikes was not to invade Iran but to give Iranians a chance to take over and effect change from the current Islamist regime.

"Neither the United States nor Israel has the intention of invading Iran... We want to give the Iranian people a situation in which they can actually put pressure for a change in policy or for a change of the regime," Azar said.