DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran is preparing for a retaliatory strike by Israel and calling on its Arab neighbors not to allow Israel to use their airspace, two Gulf diplomats told NBC News on Friday.

One of the diplomats said Israel had promised to respond to Iran’s ballistic missile attack last week, prompting Tehran to warn countries that any aid to Israel could potentially escalate into war. Both asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the sensitive issue.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council has no interest in getting caught in the crossfire,” one diplomat said. “Our focus was on de-escalation.”

Many Arab countries such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are home to U.S. bases and oil facilities that are crucial to the global economy, and Iran’s warning against aiding Israel is raising fears in the region that these sites could become targets.

However, the second diplomat added that it was unlikely that any Arab country would agree to the Israelis’ use of their airspace to attack Iran.

Both diplomats spoke after an intensive diplomatic push by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Abbas Araghchi, his foreign minister, to shore up support among their Gulf neighbors and persuade them to use their influence in Washington to contain an Israeli attack.

Araghchi traveled to Qatar and his country’s main regional rival, Saudi Arabia, where he held talks with the kingdom’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Pezeshkian also met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of an international forum in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat to discuss the situation in the Middle East, the Kremlin said on Friday. He added that he had officially accepted Putin’s invitation for a state visit.

Ahead of their meeting, Pezeshkian, widely seen as a relatively moderate, told Russian state television that Israel should “stop killing innocent people” and that such actions would be supported by the United States and the European Union.

Israel has promised that Iran will face the consequences for firing around 200 rockets last week, although the Israeli military says it has shot down most of them and there has been only one known death – Sameh Khadr Hassan Al-Asali, one 38 year old. One-year-old Palestinian hit by shrapnel in the occupied West Bank.

Tehran said it attacked Israel in retaliation for the killings of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in April that killed two of its generals .

Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran after attending Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony in July, while Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike. His death came days after several Hezbollah leaders were killed by exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, an attack widely attributed to Israel.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Tehran, and Pezeshkian has portrayed Iran as “exercising restraint” for waiting two months after Haniyeh’s death before attacking Israel.

The timing and nature of Israel’s response remains unclear. On Wednesday, Yoav Gallant, Netanyahu’s defense minister, said Israel’s response would be “lethal, precise and, above all, surprising.”

President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke this week and “agreed to remain in close contact in the coming days,” according to a White House readout of the call.

While some in Israel and beyond are encouraging the country to use this opportunity to launch an ambitious and unprecedented attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Biden has said he would not support such an action.

Brig. Gen. Rasoul Sanaei-Rad, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was also quoted by the state-run Fars news agency on Wednesday as saying attacks on nuclear facilities would “cross regional and global red lines.”

Biden has also warned Israel against attacking oil facilities in Iran, and Gulf states, fearful that their own oil sites could come under attack, have lobbied Washington to prevent such a move.

Fueling these fears, Abu al-Askari, the military spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite paramilitary group based in Iraq, said in a statement on Telegram that “the world will lose 12 million barrels of oil a day” if Iran does this deliberately. He also threatened to target “American bases, camps and interests in Iraq and the region” in retaliation.

The Iran-backed militia was suspected of being behind a drone attack on a U.S. base in northeastern Jordan, known as Tower 22, in January that killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 30.

However, Matthew Savill, director of military science at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said he would “not be surprised” if Israel “ignored the protests of Syria and Iraq and flew through their airspace.” The alternative would be “a very long route around the Red Sea and up,” he added.

“It’s hard to say how much they are trying to get the Iranians to question themselves and get caught up in counterintelligence,” he said, adding that it was widely believed that an attack on Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities ” “would require great effort” weapons that can only be dropped by US bombers.”

In Gaza and Lebanon, people reckoned with the cost of Israeli attacks. At least 22 people were killed and 117 injured in overnight attacks on the Lebanese capital Beirut, according to the country’s health ministry. NBC News has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

In Gaza, Palestinian authorities said at least 28 people were killed and dozens more injured in an airstrike on a school in the city of Deir el-Balah. The IDF said it was being used as a terrorist command center.