Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani has promised “legitimate and decisive action” against Israel during a phone call with his Belgian counterpart, Hadja Lahbib, saying such action was necessary to defend the country’s “national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty”, Al Jazeera reports according to Iranian media.

The Iranian diplomat added that Israel “has violated the stability and security of West Asia by targeting a school in Gaza and killing innocent people praying there, attacking a residential area in Beirut, and cowardly assassinating Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran”.

The Belgian minister, in a read-out of her call with Kani, said she expressed “our deepest concern about the risk of regional escalation in the Middle East” and called “on Iran, like all regional players, to exercise the utmost restraint”.