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Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Tehran would “definitely” respond to Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
“The Islamic republic of Iran is in no way seeking to expand the scope of war and crisis in the region, but this regime [Israel] will definitely receive a response for its crimes and insolence,” Pezeshkian said during a meeting with Russia’s security council secretary Sergei Shoigu.
His warning came a day after US secretary of state Antony Blinken told G7 counterparts that Washington was prepared for an “imminent” attack, according two people briefed on the matter.
The US sent military reinforcements to the Mediterranean to help defend Israel and lower the risk of a wider confrontation.
Washington also held talks with leaders and officials around the region on Monday in an effort to ease the tensions.
“We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock with a very simple message: all parties must refrain from escalation, all parties must take steps to ease tensions,” said Blinken.
“What it comes down to really is all parties finding ways to come to an agreement, not look for reasons to delay or say no. It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead,” he added.
But in Tehran, Iranian officials stepped up their threats and rhetoric against Israel.
Iran’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani told a meeting of foreign ambassadors the killing of Haniyeh was a “violation of Iran’s territorial integrity” that “clearly cannot remain unanswered”.
Iranian state television also intensified its coverage of the crisis, highlighting the need for a response.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran last week, hours after he attended the swearing-in of Pezeshkian as president.
But Israel and the region have been braced for Iran’s retaliation as both the republic and Hamas blamed the Jewish state for the assassination.
Some Israeli supermarkets ran out of bottled water over the weekend, underlining the anxiety created by the killing, while residents of Beirut felt their homes shake on Monday from warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a common show of strength from the Israeli air force.
The general in charge of US forces in the Middle East, Michael Kurilla, visited the region to help rally a coalition of allies similar to that which helped defend Israel in April, after a suspected Israeli attack on Iran’s diplomatic compound in Syria killed several senior Iranian commanders and led to Tehran firing hundreds of missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Kurilla was in Israel on Monday for talks with counterparts there.
This time, Israel is again counting on “US leadership in forming a coalition of allies and partners to defend Israel and the region from a range of aerial attacks”, the country’s defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, according to a statement.
Iran was severely embarrassed at the killing of Haniyeh in state-provided accommodation while he was a guest of the president. The republic claimed over the weekend that he was killed in an attack involving a short-range projectile carrying a warhead with approximately 7kg of explosives, without specifying the origin or method of the attack.
Speaking at a press conference in Tehran, foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said “all evidence and signs indicate that the Zionist regime is behind the terrorist crime”, although Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Kanaani said that, as Israel had “first and last responsibility” for the killing, it was “Iran’s right to act in the path of punishing the aggressor”.
Iran has made clear it will respond to the assassination, which came a day after Hizbollah military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in a targeted attack in Beirut that has been claimed by Israel.
In turn, Israel blames Hizbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group, for the attack last month on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 young people.
Hizbollah and Hamas, the militant group that carried out the October 7 assault on Israel, are both part of an alliance backed by Iran known as the axis of resistance.
Analysts believe Iran’s response could involve the parts of its axis launching attacks simultaneously. The alliance also includes Houthi rebels in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq and Syria.
Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, suggested on Monday that Israel had misjudged how Iran would retaliate. “When they receive a strong response, they’ll realise they’ve miscalculated,” he said in a public speech, without detailing potential actions.
Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi used a weekend visit to Tehran to call for calm, although his host has shown no signs of backing down from its vow for revenge.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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