DUBAI — Iran’s former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi has been seriously wounded in an air strike, according to Iranian media reports on Thursday. The reports said the 81-year-old diplomat was injured in the attack on Wednesday, while his wife was killed. It was not immediately clear whether Kharazi himself was directly targeted or whether he was caught in a strike on a nearby location. Kharazi previously served as foreign minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami and later became a foreign policy adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iranian media reported that Kharazi’s home in Tehran was targeted the previous day in an air strike. The official was hospitalised with serious injuries, according to newspapers Shargh, Etemad and Ham Mihan. “We have seen what looks like an assassination attempt against the former foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi … We don’t know why he’s been targeted. He has been gravely wounded, and his wife was killed,” Al Jazeera reporter Mohamed Vall said from Tehran. Air strikes were reported on Thursday across Iran, including in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. Four people were reported killed in Larestan, in southern Iran. Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the armed forces’ unified command said Tehran will press on with the Middle East war until the US and Israel face “permanent regret and surrender”, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesperson of the Khatam al-Anbiya central headquarters, said US and Israeli assessments of Iran’s military capabilities were “incomplete” and that Tehran would step up its military actions, with “more crushing, broader and more destructive” attacks in store for its adversaries. The threat followed comments by US President Donald Trump that Washington would hit Iran “extremely hard” within weeks, although Iran was “essentially decimated” and the US was on track to achieve its military objectives. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since the US and Israel launched joint air strikes on February 28. At least 24 people have been killed in Israel, as well as 13 US soldiers in the region. At least four Israelis were injured in Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv, following an Iranian missile attack late on Wednesday. Israel’s Home Front Command on Thursday issued several warnings of incoming rocket fire, advising the public to take shelter. Last week, several media reports quoted Kharazi saying that Iran had not shut down all avenues for negotiation and was open to possible indirect talks, even though in an interview with CNN, he said he saw “no room for diplomacy” with the US. “Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations – that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us,” Kharazi told CNN. — Agencies
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