Meloni asks Iran not to escalate, Tehran threatens Israel | News

The Italian government said on Thursday that the Prime Minister Georgia Meloni I asked the Iranian president Masoud Bazeshkian During a phone call, efforts were intensified to prevent “further escalation in the Middle East and reopen the path of dialogue.”

Meloni reiterated, according to a statement, “Italy's permanent commitment to promoting peace and stability in the region by achieving the necessary ceasefire in Gaza stripand the release of detainees agitationand to enhance humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in the devastated coastal strip.”

Iran threatens

Meanwhile, the Iranian Chargé d'Affaires of the Foreign Ministry, Ali Bagheri, accused Israel of “wanting to export tension, war and crisis from Gaza to the rest of the region,” stressing at the same time that it “is incapable of waging war on his country.”

Agence France-Presse quoted Bagheri today, Thursday, as saying that the assassination of the head of the political bureau of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh In Tehran, a “strategic mistake” will be “costly” for Israel.

He stressed “Iran's inherent right to legitimate self-defense,” adding that the response “will be costly, but it will be in the interest of security and stability and thus in the interest of all countries in the region.”

“Iran uses its inherent right to defend its national security and territorial integrity so that terrorist acts do not remain costless and without price,” he said.

In response to a question about what the response should be, he said, “The officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran are the ones who decide how to respond according to the interests of the republic.”

Baqeri explained that “the Zionists are not in a position to wage war on the Islamic Republic and do not have the power to do so.”

Islamic support

Despite growing fears of escalation and expansion of the conflict in the region and calls for restraint, especially from the United States, Baqeri stressed that members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation expressed their support for the Iranian response.

He said, “They all condemned this crime and this terrorist aggression (the assassination of Haniyeh), and they all believed that this was the inherent right of the Iranian Republic to legitimately defend itself and respond to this assassination.” He considered that “the Western countries that claim that they asked the Islamic Republic of Iran to have a limited response are in a position of accountability and not in a position of offering advice to Iran.”