TEHRAN -- Iran said Monday that while not looking to escalate regional tensions, it believes it needs to punish Israel to prevent further instability, following the occupying regime’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week.
“Iran seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said, adding that action from Tehran is inevitable.
Kan’ani called on the United States to stop supporting Israel, saying the international community had failed in its duty to safeguard stability in the region and should support the “punishment of the aggressor.”
Iran’s determination to punish Israel follows last week’s back-to-back assassinations of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut by an Israeli strike and Haniyeh in Tehran.  
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ top commander Major General Hussein Salami on Monday reiterated that the Zionist regime “will receive punishment in due time.”
Gen. Salami, speaking to journalists at an event, warned that Israel is “digging its own grave” with its actions.
“When they receive a blow, they will notice they are making mistakes. They are making mistakes all the time,” Gen. Salami said in his speech at the Day of the Journalists event. “They will see the result of their mistake. They will see when, how and where they will get their response.”
Gen. Salami also touched on the Israeli assassination program targeting Iran’s nuclear scientists.  
“Israel is the cradle of terrorism and it has been created out of killing and murder,” he said. 

“They think they can kill the nuclear scientists of another country and impede that country’s path toward peaceful nuclear technology. They think that by killing the leader of a resistance group… in another country will give them more time to live.”
He added: “They are just digging their own grave.”
U.S. President Joe Biden would convene his national security team in the situation room on Monday to discuss developments in the Middle East, the White House said, with Washington believing an Iranian retaliation was imminent. Israel was also bracing for a response from Hezbollah.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told counterparts from G7 countries on Sunday that Washington believes an Iranian retaliation could begin within the next 24 to 48 hours, Axios reported, citing sources briefed on the call.
According to the report, Blinken spoke with his counterparts amid efforts by the U.S. to prop up the Zionist regime.
British daily the Guardian said Monday Iran has called on foreign ambassadors based in Tehran to warn of the country’s moral duty to punish Israel for its “adventurism” and law-breaking in assassinating Haniyeh.
Iran has also secured an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday where it will press Arab states to back its right to take reprisal actions against the Zionist regime.
Many leaders in the Persian Gulf are willing to condemn Israel’s actions but have also been calling for Iran to show restraint, the paper said. The meeting will be held at the OIC headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
In a meeting with foreign diplomats, the acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, said: “We all have a moral duty and responsibility not to remain silent in the face of the occupation, displacement and genocide of the Palestinian nation.” He added: “Indifference and appeasement in the face of evil and injustice is a kind of moral negligence and causes the spread of evil.”
Speaking at his weekly briefing, Kan’ani, said action from Tehran was inevitable. 
“Iran seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime,” he said, as he called on the U.S. to stop supporting Israel and added that the international community had failed in its duty to safeguard stability in the region and should support the “punishment of the aggressor”.
He added: “Terror is in the essence of the Zionist regime, and its survival depends on the continuation of the approach of state terrorism. The world should strongly condemn this crime, secondly, it should support the punishment of the aggressor and avoid any approach that means supporting the aggressor.”
Meanwhile, Israeli aggression continued to rage on Monday in the Gaza Strip and on the blue line separating Lebanon from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Hezbollah said it launched an early morning drone attack on northern occupied lands that the Israeli military said wounded two Israeli troops, while Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli drone strike near a cemetery in a southern village martyred two people, including a paramedic.
In Gaza, Palestinian officials said an Israeli airstrike killed five members of Gaza’s police force, who were securing an aid convoy. The strike on a civilian target came after Israeli attacks hit two schools and a hospital complex in Gaza on Sunday, martyring at least 30 people.
At least 15 projectiles were fired from Gaza at Israeli targets on Monday, wounding one person, the Israeli military said.