Iran’s new president warns Israel against attacking Lebanon

Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday warned Israel against attacking Lebanon as tensions soar over a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights blamed on Tehran-backed Hezbollah.

“The Zionist regime (Israel) will make a great mistake with heavy consequences if it attacks Lebanon,” Pezeshkian said during a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the Iranian president’s website.

Pezeshkian assumed official responsibilities on Sunday after official endorsement from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, and is to be sworn into parliament on Tuesday.

Israel vowed to hit back after the strike on a football field in Majdal Shams, a Druze Arab town in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, killed 12 youths on Saturday.

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Israel accused Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement of being responsible for the strike, which the militant group denies.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israel in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Pezeshkian, in his phone call with Macron, accused Israel of violating “all the international frameworks and laws” in its “crimes” against Palestinians.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani on Sunday warned Israel that any new military “adventures” in Lebanon could lead to “unforeseen consequences” and “the broadening of the scope of instability, insecurity, and war in the region”.

Kanani accused Israel of pinning the blame on Hezbollah “to divert public opinion and world attention from its massive crimes” in the Gaza Strip, where war has raged since October 7.

He added that Israel “does not have the least moral authority to comment” on the deaths in Majdal Shams, on the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by the United Nations.

Iran does not recognise Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The Islamic Republic has hailed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war but denied any involvement.