Supreme leader says Israel’s attack should not be exaggerated nor downplayed n UN Security Council emergency meeting today after Iran request.   Israeli strikes kill dozens in north Gaza, near coastal city of Sidon in Lebanon.   Protesters in Israel disrupt Netanyahu speech.

Tehran, Gaza, Beirut  -  President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday that Iran did not seek war with Israel but was ready to deliver “an appropriate response” to strikes this week on Iranian military sites.

“We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country,” Pezeshkian told a cabinet meeting, adding that Iran “will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime.”

On Saturday, Israel conducted air strikes on military sites in Iran in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack on Israel, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander. Israel has warned Tehran against responding.

Pezeshkian blamed the soaring regional tensions on Israel’s “aggression” and US support for the country, which Tehran does not recognise.

Egypt’s president announced Sunday his country had proposed a two-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas during which four hostages held in Gaza would be freed. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, speaking in Cairo, said the proposal also includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.

Egypt has been a key mediator along with Qatar and the United States. This is the first time Egypt’s president has publicly proposed such a plan. There was no immediate response from Israel or Hamas.

El-Sissi said the proposal aims to “move the situation forward,” adding that once the two-day cease-fire goes into effect, negotiations would continue to make it permanent.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday (today) at Iran’s request following Israel’s deadly missile strikes in retaliation for an October 1 attack by Tehran.

The Swiss presidency of the UNSC said Sunday that the meeting would take place following the request by Iran, supported by Algeria, China and Russia.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday said Israel’s attack on the Islamic republic “should neither be exaggerated nor minimised”.

Iran’s supreme leader said Sunday that Israel’s attack on Iran this weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed”, though he stopped short of calling for retaliation.

“The miscalculations of the Israeli regime must be disrupted. It is essential to make them understand the strength, will, and initiative of the Iranian nation and its youth”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.

He added: “It is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime and to take actions that serve the interests of this nation and country.”

Khamenei’s remarks are the latest suggesting Iran is carefully weighing its response to the attack. Already, Iran’s military has said a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip or Lebanon trumps any retaliatory attack on Israel, though Iranian officials also have said they reserve the right to respond.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar.

The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency will meet with Qatar’s prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.

The negotiations will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, the official said.

The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said Sunday he was “shocked by harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction” in north Gaza, where Israeli forces are carrying out attacks they say aim to prevent Hamas regrouping.

“The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesman said.

“The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter.”

The spokesman said that according to Gaza’s health ministry, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and more than 60,000 others were forced to flee.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least eight people were killed and 25 others wounded Sunday in an Israeli strike near the southern city of Sidon, where a building was targeted.

The strike hit a densely populated area in a Sidon suburb that saw an influx of families displaced from areas further south.

It was the first strike there since the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted last month.

Protesters disrupted a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at a ceremony Sunday remembering the victims of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last year.

People shouted “Shame on you” and made a commotion, forcing Netanyahu to stop his speech shortly after it began. The major commemorative event is being broadcast live around the country.

Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures that led to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home the remaining hostages held by the fighting group in Gaza.

Hezbollah said it fired rockets at a military base in northern Israel on Sunday, a day after it declared several areas in the region a “legitimate target” due to the presence of Israeli troops.

The Iran-backed group said it targeted a “military industries base north of Haifa ... with a large rocket salvo”, after it issued an evacuation warning on Saturday for large swathes of northern Israel.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday said “painful concessions” were needed to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, saying military operations alone could not achieve the country’s war goals.  

“Not all objectives can be achieved through military operations alone ... to realise our moral duty to bring our hostages home, we will have to make painful concessions,” said Gallant in a speech marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7 last year.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday that Iran is no longer able to effectively use its proxies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel.

“Over the past year, the security establishment led by the Israel Defence Forces turned the tide of the war and had unprecedented achievements in all arenas of fighting,” he said in remarks to a memorial ceremony in Jerusalem.

Gallant said Hamas was no longer functioning as a military network in Gaza, while Hezbollah’s senior command and most of its missile capabilities had been wiped out. He said both groups “are no longer an effective tool” to be used by Iran.

The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon on Sunday to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river.

Meanwhile, Israel hit hard Iran’s ability to defend itself and to produce missiles when its air force struck two nights ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us,” Netanyahu said in a speech.

“The attack in Iran was precise and powerful, and it achieved all its objectives,” he said.

The Israeli military on Sunday said four soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon, bringing to 36 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of ground operations on September 30.

The soldiers “fell during combat in southern Lebanon”, the army said in a statement, adding that they were killed on Saturday.