Iran threatens ‘more severe response’ if Israel retaliates against missile attack

Iran's foreign minister threatened a "more severe response" if Israel retaliates against an Iranian missile attack on the country.

"The operation has ended," Abbas Araghchi said Tuesday during phone calls with his counterparts from the UK, Germany and France, the state news agency IRNA reported.

"If Israel decides to take retaliatory action, our response will be more severe," he said.

The top diplomat stressed that Iran "does not seek to escalate tension and war, although it is not afraid of it."

Iran fired around 180 ballistic missiles at Israel amid heightened tensions between the two regional arch-rivals.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attack was in response to the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC commander Abbas Nilforoshan.

Haniyeh was killed in an attack in Tehran in July, while Nasrallah and Nilforoshan were killed in an airstrike in the Lebanese capital Beirut last week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran made a "big mistake" with its missile attack and "will pay for it."

Araghchi said the missile attack on Israel was an "act of self-defense."

"We exercised self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, targeting solely military and security sites in charge of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon," he said in a message posted on his X account with a picture of war-ravaged Gaza.

"We did so after exercising tremendous restraint for almost two months, to give space for a cease-fire in Gaza," he said.

"Our action is concluded unless the Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation. In that scenario, our response will be stronger and more severe."

The Israeli army has launched a devastating military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7, killing more than 41,600 people, mostly women and children, and injuring over 96,400 others.

The conflict has spread to Lebanon, with the Israeli army launching massive airstrikes against what it calls Hezbollah targets, killing more than 1,073 people and injuring over 2,950 others since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

The international community has warned that Israeli attacks in Lebanon could escalate the Gaza conflict into a wider regional war.