The Israeli ambassador to the UK claimed this morning that Israel is “preventing all out war” and making Lebanon a “better place” with its ground offensive.
Iran, which has only ever directly targeted Israel once before, launched hundreds of missiles towards the country last night.
Most of the attacks were shot down by Israel’s air defence system and Israeli officials have not reported any major injuries as a result of the barrage.
Israel has announced it now intends to send more troops into Lebanon – a country backed by Iran – as part of its ongoing ground offensive in the country.
Speaking to Radio 4′s Today programme, ambassador Tzipi Hotovely defended Israel, saying: “When Israel is eliminating those terror proxies of Iran we are minimising the problems in the region.
“We’re making Lebanon a better place, we’re making Syria a better place…”
Alluding to Iran, she added: “If we choose appeasement we will end up with this major power that wants to have nuclear abilities to take over the Middle East.”
Hotovely also slammed the Iranian missile launch, saying: “One hundred and eighty-two Iranian rockets were targeting Israeli civilians.
“This is the most important thing because sometimes we are checking whether people got killed or didn’t get killed.
“No, the intentions matter and the intention of the Iranian regime was to target Israeli civilians in a massive attack.
“I don’t think Britain would have coped with 182 rockets direct to London, to Manchester, to Birmingham, to your main cities. This is what happened yesterday.”
She also warned that Israel would retaliate, saying: “The Iranians will pay a major price for what they did yesterday… it means they won’t be able to fire again on Israel.
“It means at the end of the day Iran was creating this circle of fire around Israel with its proxies, and we are eliminating the proxies one after the other.
“We are eliminating Hamas, we are eliminating Hezbollah and we will make sure that Iran won’t have the capabilities to hurt Israeli people.”
Hotovely’s comments shortly after PM Keir Starmer announced the UK “stands with Israel” and confirmed British forces helped to repel the Iranian attacks last night.
Israel is currently fighting in Gaza, claiming it wants to wipe out the Iranian-backed militants of Hamas. According to local authorities, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war began last year.
That war prompted a fellow proxy group of Iran, the Lebanese militants Hezbollah, to hit out at Israel.
Israel then began a ground offensive against the group in Southern Lebanon earlier this week.
Several Iranian-backed militia leaders have also been killed in recent weeks. Tehran blames Israel for these deaths, but Israel has not admitted to being responsible.
Iran does not believe Israel should exist, and supports militant organisations across the Middle East in an effort to wipe the country out, while Israel believes Iran has run covert operations against its neighbour.