TEHRAN-The foreign minister of Iran has issued a warning to Israel and the United States, stating that they will suffer “harsh consequences” if they do not put an end to the war crimes that have been committed in the Gaza Strip during the murderous Israeli aggression on the beleaguered Palestinian enclave.

The comments were made by Hossein Amir Abdollahian during a Tuesday interview with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network, which was broadcast when Israel and the Palestinian Hamas resistance group were in the midst of a temporary truce in Gaza.

“It is important that the Israeli aggression and crimes must halt and that the temporary ceasefire must become a permanent one. Otherwise, the region will face new conditions,” he said.

“The Zionist regime and the Americans should accept the harsh consequences of a failure to stop the war crimes.”

According to Amir Abdollahian, Israel wants the continuation and intensification of the conflict if the U.S. completely supports the Gaza massacre.

He went on to say that Tehran had been informed through intermediaries that the White House had just discovered that their ongoing support for Israel was not beneficial to them.

The senior Iranian diplomat also stated that the U.S. now has the will to put an end to Israeli atrocities through a stable truce, supply humanitarian relief to Gaza, and prevent Palestinians from being forcibly displaced.

“The Israeli regime failed to destroy Hamas in the past six weeks despite the all-out presence of support of the U.S. and its allied countries,” he said.

“Hamas is a reality that is rooted inside Palestine. Hamas is part of the Palestinian resistance. We believe that the future of Gaza will be decided by the Palestinian people and resistance.”

Amir Abdollahian went on to say that the war’s recent expansion was a natural reaction of regional opposition groups to the U.S.’s military assistance for Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian women and children.

He highlighted that Iran has no proxy groups in the region, and that resistance forces exist to safeguard the interests of their respective nations, maintain regional security, and defend the Arab-Muslim Ummah.

The Iranian foreign minister also called Lebanon’s Hezbollah one of the region’s most strong resistance forces.

He averred that the U.S. and certain Western nations conveyed 28 signals to Hezbollah in the last six weeks encouraging the resistance group to exercise restraint and avoid the Gaza war from escalating.

He went on to say that occupation is a dangerous phenomenon that will never be accepted under international law, emphasizing that Palestinian territory belongs to the Palestinian people.

“We believe that helping the Palestinian people in the face of the occupation and providing the occupied Palestinian land with political support has a legal, humanitarian, Islamic, and religious basis,” Amir Abdollahian asserted.

He stated that Iran’s political solution to the Palestine issue entails a vote among the original population of Palestine, including Jews, Christians, and Muslims, overseen by the United Nations and funded by foreign nations.

“Global consensus on vitality of long-term ceasefire in Gaza”

In a phone call with his Swiss counterpart Ignazio Cassis on Monday, Amir Abdollahian said that there is an international consensus on the need for the establishment of a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip after it was subject to a genocidal war by the Israeli regime for about seven weeks.

He alluded to a forthcoming foreign ministerial meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the situation in Palestine, which has been scheduled for Wednesday.

“There is an international consensus on the priority of lasting cessation of Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the occupied West Bank, lifting of the Gaza blockade, dispatch of humanitarian aid, including medicines, food, and fuel, and preventing forced expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” Iran’s top diplomat added. 

The Swiss diplomat, for his part, voiced concerns about the situation in the Palestinian territories, underlining the need of freeing detainees, assisting civilians, delivering humanitarian supplies to affected regions, and stopping the Gaza conflict from escalating further.

He cited negotiations held on his country’s behalf to preserve civilian lives, as well as attempts undertaken to achieve a humanitarian truce in Gaza.

Cassis expressed optimism that the current Gaza truce will be sustained for a longer period of time.

On October 7, the Palestinian Hamas resistance group launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying regime in reprisal for its increased crimes against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has killed approximately 15,000 Palestinians, largely women and children, and left enormous swaths of the coastal enclave in ruins since the commencement of the onslaught. Another 7,000 Palestinians are reported to be trapped beneath the rubble. 

Israel has also established a complete siege on the region, depriving the more than two million Palestinians who live there of gasoline, power, food, and water.

The Gaza truce, which expired on Monday, has been extended for two more days. It resulted in the end of Israel’s destructive attacks on Gaza, as well as a swap of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for Israelis held captives by Hamas.