BERLIN/DUBAI, April 10 (Reuters) - German airline

Lufthansa said on Wednesday it had suspended flights

to Tehran due to the situation in the Middle East, which is on

alert for possible Iranian retaliation for a suspected Israeli

air strike on Iran's embassy in Syria.

An Iranian news agency briefly stoked tensions further when

it published an Arabic report on social media platform X saying

all airspace over Tehran had been closed for military drills.

The agency then removed the report and denied it had issued such

news.

Countries in the region and the United States have been on

high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran since

April 1 when Israeli warplanes were suspected of bombing the

Iranian embassy compound in Syria.

Lufthansa said it suspended flights to and from Tehran from

April 6 until probably April 11.

"We are constantly monitoring the situation in the Middle

East and are in close contact with the authorities. The safety

of our guests and crew members is Lufthansa's top priority," a

spokesperson for the company told Reuters.

Lufthansa and its subsidiary Austrian Airlines are the only

two Western carriers operating international flights into

Tehran, which is mostly served by Turkish and Middle Eastern

airlines.

Austrian Airlines, which is owned by Lufthansa, runs a

direct Vienna-Tehran service six times a week, was still

scheduled to operate its flight into Tehran on Thursday,

according to its website and FlightRadar24.

There was no immediate word from other international

airlines that fly to Tehran.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that

Israel "must be punished and it shall be" for the Damascus

strike that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps

members.

Among them was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in

the Quds Force, an elite overseas unit of the Revolutionary

Guards.

Israel, which launched a war in the Gaza Strip six months

ago against Iran-backed Hamas, has not confirmed it was behind

the strike on Damascus, but the Pentagon has said it was.

COULD STRIKES BE IMMINENT?

In an apparent response to Khamenei, Israeli Foreign

Minister Israel Katz said Israel will respond if Iran attacks

Israel from its own soil.

The United States and its allies believe major missile or

drone strikes by Iran or its proxies against military and

government targets in Israel are imminent, Bloomberg reported on

Wednesday evening, citing U.S. and Israeli security sources.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a call with

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, made clear that the

United States would stand with Israel against any threats by

Iran, the State Department said.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab

Emirates, Qatar and Iraq meanwhile spoke on Wednesday by phone

with Iran's foreign minister and discussed regional tensions,

the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards shot down a Ukraine International

Airlines passenger flight on Jan. 8, 2020 shortly after it took

off from Tehran Airport at a time of heightened tensions between

Tehran and Washington over the killing of a top Iranian

commander in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport.

Later, Tehran said that the downing of the Ukrainian

airliner was a "disastrous mistake" by forces who were on high

alert.

In retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of

an elite overseas unit of the Guards, Iranian forces fired

missiles at military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq on Jan.

3.

Iran backs groups that have entered the fray across the

region since Israel launched its invasion of Gaza following the

Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in six months

of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, according to the health ministry

there. Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 people,

according to Israeli tallies.