DUBAI, February 5. /TASS/. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called on high-profile figures in the Muslim community to press their countries’ governments to sever economic ties with Israel and stop offering any kind of support for it.

He stressed that politicians, scientists and journalists of Muslim countries should "inform people and call on them to press their governments to deal a strong blow to the Zionist regime (Israel - TASS)." This blow, in his words, doesn’t mean a war but "severing economic ties with the Zionist regime."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.