MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. Iran is always ready to stand up to any aggression, Israel will receive a response to its actions, the country’s ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali told TASS.

Commenting on the possibility of abandoning plans to attack Israel ahead of a new round of talks in Qatar on the Gaza ceasefire, the diplomat recalled that "the words of Iran's spiritual leader about the answer for the spilled blood" and the Iranian side's attitude show that it will follow through.

"There will be a response, but we do not know when exactly," the diplomat said. "In any case, the Islamic Republic of Iran is always ready to stand up to any aggression, we will respond to it (Israel - TASS)," he pointed out.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dmitry Gendelman, an adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, told TASS that the next round of talks on settling the situation in the Gaza Strip is scheduled for August 15 in the capital of Qatar. The Israeli delegation that will head to Doha will be headed by Mossad intelligence director David Barnea, he specified.

Deteriorating situation in region

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking over 240 hostages, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the crisis, and has been delivering air strikes on Gaza as well as some parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes have also been reported on the West Bank.

The Palestinian Hamas movement announced on July 31 that the head of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli strike on his residence in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, Iran's elite military units) said that Haniyeh was killed by a short-range projectile with a warhead weighing about seven kilograms, adding that his assassination was organized by Israel with US support. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that Israel will be severely punished for the killing of the Palestinian politician.