Any possible Israeli attack on Lebanon will have serious consequences for Israel, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a phone call with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Iran's state media reported.
Israeli authorities blamed Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for a rocket attack that hit a football ground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, killing 12 children and teenagers, and vowed to inflict a heavy response. Hezbollah denied any responsibility for the strike.
"Any possible Israeli attack on Lebanon will have serious consequences for Israel," Mr Pezeshkian was quoted by Iranian state media as saying.
"We are willing to improve our relations with France on the basis of mutual trust," Mr Pezeshkian added in his conversation with Mr Macron.
Mr Macron spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, the French presidency said, as France seeks to prevent a broader escalation between Israel and Hezbollah.
The presidency said Mr Macron had reminded Mr Netanyahu that France was fully committed to doing "everything to avoid a new escalation in the region by passing messages to all parties involved in the conflict".
Netanyahu vows 'severe response' to rocket fire in Golan Heights
This comes after Mr Netanyahu vowed Israel would deliver a "severe response" to the rocket fire that killed 12 children at the weekend.
Last night Israel's security cabinet authorised Mr Netanyahu's government to decide on the "manner and timing" of a response to the rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
"These children are our children ... The State of Israel will not, and cannot, let this pass. Our response will come and it will be severe," Mr Netanyahu said on a visit to the site of the attack, according to a statement issued by his office.
Israel and the United States have blamed Lebanon's Hezbollah for Saturday's strike. The Iran-backed group has denied any role.
The incident in which a missile hit a sports field in the Golan Heights, has risked tipping the fragile standoff into a more serious escalation, drawing international calls on both sides to show restraint.
There was no immediate indication of what action Israel may take but the country's largest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted unnamed officials as saying the response would be "limited but significant".
The report said options for retaliation ranged from a limited but "photogenic" attack on infrastructure including bridges, power plants and ports, to hitting Hezbollah weapons depots or targeting high-level Hezbollah commanders.
Earlier, the Lebanese civil defence said an Israeli drone strike killed two people and wounded three more in southern Lebanon.
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The Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon wounded three people including an infant, an official in the Lebanese civil defence told Reuters.
The rescue service did not say whether the dead were fighters or civilians.
The Israeli military said its air defences downed a drone which crossed from Lebanon into the area of Western Galilee.
Flights at Beirut's international airport have been cancelled or delayed as airlines responded to the possibility of an Israeli response.
Both Israel and Hezbollah have appeared at pains to avoid a full-scale war since they began trading blows in October in a conflict ignited by the Gaza war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday that he does not want to see an escalation of conflict on Israel's northern border and reiterated US support for Israel.
"I emphasise (Israel's) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they're able to do that," Mr Blinken said during a news conference in Tokyo.
"But we also don't want to see the conflict escalate. We don't want to see it spread."
Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that killed the youngsters but it said at the time it had fired a missile against a military target on the Golan Heights, a border area Israel seized from Syria after the 1967 Middle East war and has since annexed in a move not generally recognised internationally.
