Is there a new risk of escalation in the Middle East, with the prospect of retaliation by Iran against Israel, after the bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria? Iran is “threatening to launch a significant attack against Israel,” US President Joe Biden said earlier this week.
As a “precaution”, and a concrete sign of these fears, the United States announced on Thursday restricting the movements in Israel of its diplomatic staff and members of their families. And an American general in charge of the Middle East, Michael Erik Kurilla, is in Israel to discuss with the country’s military leaders “security threats in the region”, precisely in this context of escalation with Iran. Furthermore, the German airline Lufthansa announced that it would extend the suspension of its flights to and from Tehran, “probably until Saturday (inclusive)”, due to these tensions.
The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose country, an enemy of Israel, supports Hamas, had indicated that Israel would be “punished” after a deadly attack attributed to it on April 1 in Syria. This strike destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus and left 16 dead, including seven members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, according to an NGO. “If Iran carries out an attack from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded in Persian.
Warnings and diplomatic phone calls
After telephone conversations with his German, Australian and British counterparts, the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, spoke of the “need” for Tehran to respond to the strike against its consulate in Damascus, while seeking to “avoid the tensions “. During these meetings, “I declared that Iran was not seeking to broaden the scope of the war,” he wrote on X.
The White House said Thursday it had “warned” Iran, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone with his Chinese, Turkish and Saudi counterparts, calling on them to put pressure on Tehran against any attack targeting Israel, according to the State Department. Russia and Germany, for their part, called for “restraint” to avoid an escalation in the Middle East where tensions have increased between Iran, Israel and their respective allies since the start of the war in Gaza.
“We are in the middle of a war in Gaza, which continues at full speed (…) but we are also preparing to face challenges in other theaters” of operations, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, declared on Thursday. But according to the BBC, which interviewed experts, the Iranian response could also come from Lebanon, via Hezbollah, in order to avoid a direct confrontation.