MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/. The current situation in the Middle East is extremely dangerous and it is not easy to extinguish the "blaze," Russia’s ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov has said on the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"The situation [in the Middle East] is extremely dangerous," he said, noting that European and US diplomats were calling for restraint by those forces that had long declared their readiness for restraint, "but they have now been provoked."

"Restraint is the right word. It is precisely this kind of approach that can extinguish the current ‘blaze.’ It is to be hoped these efforts by the European and US American diplomacy yield a positive result," the Russian ambassador stated.

Viktorov noted that Russia and many other states, primarily in the Middle East, were unanimous that "no country or political force in the region is interested in escalating the conflict and turning it into a regional war or a broader one."

"We are conveying this position or ours to the Israeli partners," he emphasized.

On July 31, Hamas announced the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement's political bureau, as a result of an Israeli strike on his residence in Tehran, where he had arrived to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. The Al Hadath TV channel said that Haniyeh lost his life to a direct missile strike. Iran's permanent representative to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani said his country reserved the right to respond to the Israeli strike on Tehran.