By Ahmet Dursun
Iran warned on Saturday that if Israeli attacks on Gaza continue, Tehran “will have to intervene," US media reported.
According to US news site Axios, citing two unnamed diplomatic sources, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian conveyed his country's message during a meeting in Beirut with Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.
Wennesland asked Amir-Abdollahian to help prevent the conflict in Gaza and Israel from spreading into the region.
According to the sources, Amir-Abdollahian also said that Iran does not want the conflict to turn into a regional war and that it can help release Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
Amir-Abdollahian also stressed that his country has "red lines" and told the UN envoy that if Israel's attacks continue and especially if a land attack on Gaza is launched, Iran "will have to respond."
Wennesland reportedly contacted Israeli officials, especially Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, and conveyed Iran's message to Tel Aviv.
In a written statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced that Amir-Abdollahian and Wennesland met at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.
Amir-Abdollahian, who met with Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah as well as senior officials of Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad as part of his contacts in Beirut, called on Israel to immediately stop its attacks on Gaza and said "the resistance front is on alert."
The message comes with the conflict just over a week old, and with an Israeli ground offensive into Gaza increasingly seen as imminent.
Airstrikes on the Gaza Strip continue, with the UN and other international actors saying that the Israeli cutoff of food, water, and electricity supplies to Gaza and an evacuation order from the north to the south risk a humanitarian disaster for the strip's 2.2 million residents.