Indonesia condemns the Israeli attacks on Iran and calls for restraint from all parties: the Middle East and Africa

The State Department has condemned Israeli airstrikes on Iran over the weekend, which killed at least four soldiers and stoked fears of a full-scale war in the Middle East. It calls on all parties to the conflict not to escalate the conflict further.

“Indonesia strongly condemns Israel’s military attacks against Iran. Such escalation and expansion of conflicts are clear violations of international law and demonstrate Israel’s total disregard for them,” the Foreign Ministry said on X on Saturday.

“All parties must exercise maximum restraint and refrain from actions that could escalate tensions and lead to further instability in the region,” the ministry said.

Dozens of Israeli warplanes carried out three waves of attacks before dawn on Saturday against missile factories and other sites near Tehran and in western Iran, the Israeli military said, as reported by Reuters.

The strikes were in retaliation for Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, in which Iran fired some 200 missiles in only its second-ever direct attack on its arch-enemy. Most of those missiles were intercepted, but one person was killed, according to AFP.

Tensions in the Middle East have increased since the war in Gaza last October, and the United Nations Security Council has struggled to act.

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestinian territory remains the root cause of conflict in the Middle East” and that the two-state solution was “the only way to bring peace to the region.”