Iran’s Raisi, Erdogan vow to contain Israel-Gaza conflict

Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that he and his visiting Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, agreed on the importance of preventing the Israel-Hamas conflict from engulfing the entire Middle East.

But Raisi retorted that it was critical for all countries to shut off trade with Israel, an apparent allusion to Turkey's stubborn unwillingness to do so, which highlighted strains in Ankara's relations with Tehran.

The hardline Iranian leader was making his first official visit to Turkey since his 2021 victory, for discussions aimed at resolving a number of issues between the historically close but uneasy neighbours.

The trip was postponed twice due to the quick escalation of the war in Gaza and a terrible bomb attack in Iran claimed by Daesh militants earlier this month, which killed 89 people, AFP reported.

During a joint media appearance in Ankara, Erdogan stated that the two leaders agreed on the necessity to contain the violence in Gaza and further up their fight against "terrorism."

“We agreed on the importance of avoiding steps that would further threaten the security and stability of our region,” Erdogan said.

Raisi landed in Turkey less than a day after the US and the UK launched a new round of combined air strikes against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen in response to the rebels' attacks on Red Sea shipping channels.

As a security precaution, several shipping companies have diverted business away from the Red Sea and began taking a longer route across South Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

The moves have hampered trade and jeopardised global supply lines.

The Iranian president did not directly allude to the Houthis in his public statements.

Tehran has previously claimed that the Houthis have the right to try to prevent ships from reaching Israel, but that this did not directly affect the rebels' conduct.

Raisi stated he believed the Palestinians in Gaza had already "won" the war against Israel because they had been fighting for more than 100 days.

However, the turbulence in the Middle East since Israel went to war in retaliation for Hamas's October 7 attack has added a new degree of complication to the two neighbours' relations.

Erdogan portrays Iran-backed Hamas as democratically elected "liberators" rather than the "terrorist" organisation it has been labelled in the West.

He compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler for carrying out an offensive that has killed over 25,000 people, the majority of them are women, children, and adolescents, according to the enclave's Hamas-run health ministry.

However, Erdogan had first supported Israel's right to respond to Hamas raids, which killed 1,140 people, the majority of whom were civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli numbers.

Analysts report significant outrage in Iran's official and semi-official media over Turkey's continued commercial and diplomatic connections with Israel.

Raisi reiterated in his public remarks that all nations must "limit their relationship with the Zionist regime."

“We have no doubt that measures should be taken to deter the Zionist regime and its atrocities,” Raisi said.

“Certainly, cutting the vital arteries of the Zionist regime, and political and economic relations can be effective in forcing the Zionist regime to end all these atrocities.”

The trade disagreements between the two regional giants exacerbate existing tensions in Syria, where they supported opposite parties in the country's civil war and Azerbaijan and Armenia's struggle over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

During Syria's civil war, Turkiye supported rebel efforts to overthrow Iranian- and Russian-backed President Bashar Assad.

Iran has recently attempted to negotiate a truce between Erdogan and Assad, but the process appears to have stopped in recent months due to Damascus's rejection of the overture.

The two sides inked ten agreements and memoranda of understanding, with the goal of eventually increasing yearly trade to $30 billion.

Analysts estimate the current level as $6 billion.