CNN’s Erin Burnett sat down with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Thursday's OutFront show to discuss the situation in the Middle East. During their conversation, Burnett did not call out Amir-Abdollahian for bear hugging the Vienna Convention, while Iran has violated it repeatedly over the past several decades.
Iran has spun its failed attack as large enough to send a message, but restrained enough to avoid a regional war, while warning that if Israel responded, it would respond more harshly, leading Burnett to ask, “So when you say the response will be at a maximum level, you also, I know, have warned Israel against crossing what you have used the words, quote-unquote, 'red lines.' What are those red lines, and what is a maximum level? You used, what, more than 300 drones, cruise missiles in that attack? What would escalate from there for you? What is a maximum level above that?”
By the end of the night, Burnett’s interview would mostly be out of date as Israel responded, but despite all of Tehran’s fiery rhetoric warning about such a response, it appears content to pretend it didn’t happen.
As for Amir-Abdollahian’s response, he declared that “Well, the red lines that they crossed, the red line that Israel crossed was the attack upon the embassy building of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, Syria. And during that attack, seven official military advisers carrying out a fight against terrorism were martyred through a missile attack of the regime of Israel. Vienna Conventions recognized -- Vienna Conventions were not respected, so red lines were crossed by the Israeli regime.”
Amir-Abdollahian’s would continue to ramble off what turned out to be empty threats and would repeatedly justify Iran’s attack as a legitimate defense after Israel violated its sovereignty by targeting its embassy.
While Burnett had no way of knowing for sure at the time that Amir-Abdollahian’s was bluffing, she did have a way of knowing recent history. Throughout the interview, Burnett would question him about escalation or the failed nature of Saturday’s salvo, but she never once brought up his hypocrisy. Donald Trump didn’t just wake up one day and decide to strike Qasem Soleimani, he did it in response to Iranian proxies attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. On Friday, only one day before Iran’s reckless attack, the highest criminal court in Argentina ruled that Iran was responsible for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. In 2011, there was the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Somehow, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States managed to respond by not spastically bombing Iran and somehow, Amir-Abdollahian was not questioned about it.
Here is a transcript for the April 18 show:
CNN Erin Burnett OutFront
4/18/2024
7:39 PM ET
ERIN BURNETT: So when you say the response will be at a maximum level, you also, I know, have warned Israel against crossing what you have used the words, quote-unquote, "red lines." What are those red lines, and what is a maximum level? You used, what, more than 300 drones, cruise missiles in that attack. What would escalate from there for you? What is a maximum level above that?
HOSSEIN AMIR-ABDOLLAHIAN (through translator): Well, the red lines that they crossed, the red line that Israel crossed, was the attack upon the embassy building of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, Syria.
And during that attack, seven official military advisers carrying out a fight against terrorism were martyred through a missile attack of the regime of Israel. Vienna Conventions recognized -- Vienna Conventions were not respected, so red lines were crossed by the Israeli regime.
However, in our attack, within the framework of legitimate defense, why do we call it carried out at a minimum? Because it was geared towards two military targets, one the Innova Team Air Base and the other one an intelligence and information centers from which attacks took place on our building. We did not target economic and financial centers, civilian centers, only the two locations from which F-35 aircraft were flown, took off from there, and targeted the embassy building in the Golan.
This was our minimum response. But in case of a repeated adventure-seeking and adventurism of the Israeli regime, what will our maximum response be? I can only say that it will be carried out at a maximum level, and it will be regretful for them. The details have been planned by the armed forces of my country. However, I do hope that Israel does not commit a grave error in calculus.
