France warned its citizens in Iran to leave the country as soon as possible as tensions spiral in the Middle East.
It also formally advised its citizen against travelling to Iran.
Paris issued the advice due to a risk of military escalation in the region, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
The Foreign Office in Britain already advises against all travel to Iran.
“British and British-Iranian dual nationals are at significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention,” it said.
“ Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain you.”
Reminder: if you are a British national in Lebanon, you should register your presence here to receive the latest information from @FCDOgovUK: https://t.co/t80LVEptXq
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) August 2, 2024
We advise against all travel to Lebanon.
British citizens are already being advised to leave Lebanon, while commercial flights are still running, and to register with the Foreign Office in case an evacuation is needed.
Earlier on Friday, Joe Biden said the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was not helpful to reaching a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza.
The US president made the comment as another airline suspended flights to Tel Aviv as tensions spiralled in the Middle East.
Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike on Wednesday when he was visiting Tehran to attend the swearing in ceremony for Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian.
“It doesn’t help,” Mr Biden told reporters late on Thursday, when asked if Haniyeh’s assassination ruined the chances for a Gaza ceasefire agreement.
The US president also said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Thursday.
Haniyeh’s death came 24 hours after Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah commander senior Fuad Shukr in Lebanon that it said was behind a deadly strike on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights which killed a dozen children and teenagers on Saturday.
As tensions have soared in the region, airlines including Lufthansa have been suspending flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut.
Italy’s ITA Airways was the latest to take such action, announcing that it was suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv “due to the geopolitical developments in the Middle East and to ensure the safety of its passengers and crews”.
Flights have been suspended until August 6, it said.
America, Britain and other allies are calling for de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East.
But Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said avenging the Hamas political leader’s assassination was “Tehran’s duty” because it occurred in the Iranian capital.
He led prayers in Iran on Thursday for Haniyeh whose body was taken on a funeral march through the capital before being flown back to Qatar for burial.
Haniyeh will be interred on Friday in a cemetery after funeral prayers in the city of Lusail, north of Qatar's capital Doha.
Normally based in Qatar, Haniyeh was seen as more moderate than some of the Hamas leaders in Gaza and had participated in internationally-brokered indirect talks on reaching a ceasefire in the besieged strip.
The International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office, though, requested an arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes at the same time it issued a similar request against Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s government has issued no claim of responsibility for Haniyeh’s death but has said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies of late, including Hamas and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, and would respond forcefully to any attack.
Israel’s tensions with Iran and Hezbollah have fanned fears of a widened conflict in a region already on edge amid Israel’s assault on Gaza which has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages.
The Gaza health ministry says that since then Israel’s military assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide accusations that Israel denies.
