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World leaders on Tuesday urged Iran and Israel to step back from the brink after Tehran fired a barrage of rockets at its arch rival.
Tehran said the attack — which took place as Israel said it was mounting a ground offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon — was in response to the killings of Iran-backed militant leaders.
It was the second time Iran has directly attacked Israel, after a missile and drone attack in April in retaliation for a deadly Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
After the wave of missiles, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the “broadening conflict in the Middle East”.
As Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah broadening alongside its ongoing war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza, Guterres slammed “escalation after escalation” in the region.
“This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire.”
As the attack unfolded, President Joe Biden ordered the US military to “aid Israel’s defence against Iranian attacks and shoot down missiles that are targeting Israel”, a White House statement said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the attack was “totally unacceptable” and should be condemned by the entire world”.
“Initial reports suggest that Israel, with the active support of the United States and other partners, effectively defeated this attack,” Blinken told reporters.
Israel vowed to retaliate in the wake of Iran’s attack.
“This attack will have consequences. We have plans, and we will operate at the place and time we decide,” said Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
The Palestinian Islamist group, whose October 7 attack sparked the war in Gaza, praised Iran’s attack on Israel.
Hamas said the attack was revenge for the killing of “martyrs”, including the death of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a strike in Beirut on Friday, as well as the death of Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) blesses the heroic rocket launches carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran against wide areas of our occupied lands,” a statement said, adding it was “in revenge for the blood of our heroic martyrs”.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for an end to the “spiral of violence” blighting the Middle East, while the foreign minister demanded “restraint”.
“The Spanish government condemns Iran’s attack against Israel and asks that the spiral of violence ends,” Sanchez said on social media platform X.
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told the Cadena Ser radio station that Madrid was issuing “a new call to all the actors, obviously including Israel, to show restraint and not escalation”.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock demanded Iran end its missile attack on Israel, writing on X: “I condemn the ongoing attack in the strongest possible terms.”
“Iran must stop the attack immediately” as it was “leading the region further towards the abyss”, she added.
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Tuesday said that he was concerned about an “escalation”.
“The situation is worsening in the Near and Middle East, with an escalation and an attack, and a direct conflict that seems to be underway between Iran and Israel,” Barnier told parliament, branding the situation “extremely serious”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Tuesday condemned Iran’s attack “in the strongest terms”, his office said.
During a call with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, Starmer also “expressed the UK’s steadfast commitment to Israeli security and the protection of civilians”, according to a readout of the call from Starmer’s office.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly slammed the attack.
“We’ve all seen the attacks by Iran against Israel, and we condemn them unequivocally,” she told reporters in Ottawa, adding that they “will only serve to further destabilise the region, and must stop”.
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