Diplomatic maneuvers are intensifying on Monday in an attempt to avoid a military escalation in the Middle East between Iran and its allies on the one hand and Israel on the other, at a time when many countries are calling on their nationals to leave Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was ready to confront “Iran and its henchmen on all fronts.” “Anyone who kills our citizens or harms our country […] will pay a very high price,” he warned on Sunday evening.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, urged “all parties, as well as states with influence, to act urgently” to avoid a “wider” conflict in the region.
Iran, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the death Wednesday of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in his Tehran residence. The day before, Israel claimed responsibility for a strike that killed Hezbollah military leader Fouad Shokr near Beirut.
Iran said Monday it had the “legal right” to punish its arch-enemy Israel for the assassination in Tehran.
“We consider our right to defend our national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity as an indisputable right,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said at his weekly press conference on Monday.
Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s death, but had vowed to destroy Hamas after the movement’s unprecedented October 7 attack on its soil that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.
After the war began, Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthi rebels, who together with Hamas and Iraqi armed groups form what Iran calls the “axis of resistance,” opened fronts against Israel.
But last week’s assassinations prompted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to say that Israel had crossed “red lines”, while Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei threatened “severe punishment”.
“Iran’s axis of evil”
Faced with the risk of a regional conflagration, several countries are trying to prevent an escalation.
A G7 ministerial meeting on Sunday said it feared “a regionalisation of the crisis, starting with Lebanon”, where neighbouring Israel would retaliate in the event of an attack by Hezbollah, and called for “avoiding escalation”.
According to the American media outlet Axios, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his G7 counterparts that an attack by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel could be launched within the next 24 to 48 hours, therefore as early as Monday, according to sources informed of the discussions.
He also spoke to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Soudani about the possibility of attacks by pro-Iranian Iraqi armed groups.
A Russian envoy, former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, arrived in Tehran, the day after a visit by the head of Jordanian diplomacy.
US President Joe Biden is due to hold talks with the National Security Council on Monday, after the United States, Israel’s main ally, beefed up its military presence in the Middle East while saying it was seeking to “de-escalate the situation diplomatically”.
“We are determined to oppose” Iran and its allies “on all fronts, in all arenas,” Mr. Netanyahu hammered home during a ceremony in Jerusalem.
At his side, President Isaac Herzog declared: “we are capable of protecting our citizens against any threat posed” by “the Iranian axis of evil.”
“You know, you can’t know what’s going to happen in 20 minutes. […] “But we are a strong country and I think we will win this war,” says Yehuda Levi, a shop owner in Haifa.
39,623 dead in Gaza according to Hamas
Meanwhile, many countries including Sweden, the United States, Britain, France, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have called on their nationals to leave Lebanon.
While exchanges of fire have been almost daily since October 8 on the Israeli-Lebanese border, Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon have left four dead according to the Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah has fired rockets on northern Israel.
On the southern front, the Israeli army reported the firing of around fifteen rockets from the Gaza Strip, most of which were intercepted.
The army is continuing its bombardments against the besieged Palestinian territory, ravaged and threatened by famine according to the UN, where Hamas – considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union – took power in 2007.
The Hamas attack on October 7 in southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 111 are still being held in Gaza, including 39 who have died, according to the army.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has so far killed 39,623 people, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilian and combat deaths.