Hezbollah asked its Iranian patrons to attack Israel as the Israel Defense Forces increased pressure on the Lebanese terror group over the past week, but so far, Tehran has rebuffed the request, US media reported Tuesday.
Two Israeli officials cited by the Axios news site said that the Iranians told Hezbollah that “the timing isn’t right” for it to intervene because Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is in New York for the UN General Assembly.
Hezbollah asked the Iranians to attack as part of their response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran two months ago, according to the officials and an unnamed Western diplomat.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the assassination of Haniyeh, who was killed in a guesthouse in Tehran hours after attending the swearing-in ceremony for the Pezeshkian. Nevertheless, Iran and Hamas have both blamed Jerusalem and vowed to retaliate.
The sources said that the “Iranians expressed reservation about joining the fight against Israel now and didn’t give a positive response.”
Furthermore, a senior Israeli security source told Axios that the Israel Defense Forces has received instructions from the security cabinet to avoid carrying out actions that would give Tehran a reason to join the fight.
Iran’s UN mission and a Hezbollah spokesperson did not respond to Axios’s request for comment.
The report came after Pezeshkian said Tuesday that Hezbollah “cannot stand alone” against Israel, in an interview with CNN translated from Persian to English.
He called on the international community to “not allow Lebanon to become another Gaza,” in response to a question on whether Iran would use its influence with Hezbollah to urge restraint.
Tehran carried out an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel in April after several members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in an Iranian consular building in Damascus in a strike blamed on Israel.
Iran provides financial and military backing to Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and a number of other terror groups in Iraq and Syria that have been attacking Israel on a regular basis since the start of the war in Gaza.
The IDF said Tuesday that it had struck more than 1,600 Hezbollah sites over the previous day — mostly weapons stored within homes — marking its heaviest airstrikes against the terror group in its history.
The Lebanon health ministry said Tuesday that nearly 600 people, including 35 children, were killed in the strikes across Lebanon. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets deep into northern Israel over the past several days, wounding several. Fighting between Israel and the Lebanese terror group has been ongoing for the past 11 months — since Hezbollah started launching missiles at Israel on October 8, one day after the Hamas massacre in southern Israel — with violence spiking over the past few days since Israel began a sustained offensive against Hezbollah’s missile capabilities.
AFP contributed to this report.