The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, warned the Lebanese militia Hezbollah on Friday not to get involved in fighting between Israel and Iran, amid fears that the steadily escalating conflict could pull in other regional actors.
“I suggest that the Lebanese proxy be careful and understand that Israel has lost patience with terrorists who threaten it. If there will be further terror, there will be no Hezbollah,” Katz said on Friday morning in a post on X.
Katz’s warning was a response to Hezbollah’s secretary general, Naim Qassem, who said on Thursday night that the Iran-backed militia was “not neutral” in the Iran-Israel war and that it would “act as it sees appropriately” – stopping short of saying the group would intervene militarily.
Hezbollah’s comments come as fighting between Israel and Iran enter its seventh day, with bombings escalating on both sides.
Israel’s military said it struck dozens of targets on Friday, including a weapons research centre in Tehran that it said was used for the development of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
Iran launched a salvo of ballistic missiles in a rare mid-afternoon strike, with warning sirens heard across the entire country. First responders were dispatched to an impact site to the northern city of Haifa, with more reports of missiles hitting in central and southern Israel.
The war started when Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iran in the early morning of last Friday, in what it said was an operation aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, triggering a tit-for-tat cycle of bombing between the two countries.
Israel knocked out much of Iran’s air defences in its initial wave of attacks and Israeli jets have operated with relative freedom over Iran. Iran has sent a steadily diminishing number of ballistic missiles at Israel but has still managed to get some past Israeli air defences, hitting a hospital in southern Israel on Thursday and injuring about 80 people.
Israeli bombing has killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,326, according to Iranian media, while Iranian missiles have killed at least 25 people and wounded hundreds in Israel.
Countries have been working to evacuate their citizens from Israel, with the UK coordinating with Israeli authorities to charter repatriation flights once Israeli airports reopen, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Friday.
Neighbouring states worry that an expanding war between Iran and Israel could have regional consequences, particularly if Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon get involved.
Iran has threatened that if the US joins Israel in its bombing campaign it would target US bases in the Middle East, which hosts thousands of US troops across at least eight different countries.
Iranian-backed militias have expressed solidarity with Iran thus far but have gone no further.
“The idea that if the US intervenes it will push all the proxies in the region to put it on fire, of course this is a scenario we need to take into account, but the whole [Iranian] axis is no longer the same,” said a western diplomatic source in the Middle East.
Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East are severely battered from two years of fighting with Israel and by the collapse of the Syrian regime – a key Iranian ally – in December.
“We are not worried more than we should be about what Qassem is saying, he’s just [saying] we’re not neutral and support in different ways. It would be suicide for them to get involved,” the diplomatic source said.
Katz ordered the Israeli military to intensify strikes on Iranian government targets in Tehran, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij, an internal security force.
Katz said the attacks were aimed at inducing “a mass evacuation of the population from Tehran, in order to destabilise the regime and increase deterrence in response to missile fire on Israel’s home front”. The Israeli military later announced that it hit the headquarters of the Basij.
A spokesperson from the Iranian ministry of health said Israel struck a hospital in Tehran, which they said was the third Iranian hospital to be attacked since fighting began.
An Iranian missile landed in Beersheba in southern Israel on Friday morning, lightly injuring seven people and damaging nearby homes. Iran said it was aiming the missiles at the nearby Dimona nuclear facility.
As fighting continued, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met his European counterparts in Geneva on Friday in what the French foreign ministry said was an attempt to restart the Iran nuclear talks.
The US has flirted with the idea of joining Israel in its attacks on Iran. The White House said on Thursday that President Donald Trump would decide whether or not to intervene within two weeks. The time period is reportedly to allow a window for diplomacy to take effect, with the US wanting Iran to completely abandon its nuclear programme.
Israel is keen for the US to jump in the fray, as only the US possesses the capacity to strike Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility, the Fordow uranium enrichment site, which lies up to 100 metres under a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
Privately, sources familiar with the deliberations for the US to intervene militarily in Iran have said that Trump was also uncertain if the US’s most powerful bunker buster could indeed take out Fordow.
Aragchi said that discussions with the US were impossible “until Israeli aggression stops”.
The European diplomatic efforts were meant to jumpstart US-Iranian discussions in order to avoid a US military intervention. They involved European states that, while opposed to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, favoured a ceasefire rather than a prolonged military conflict.
