Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered the country’s armed forces to answer any enemy threat immediately and without geographic limits, as fears grow of a fresh confrontation with the United States and Israel.

In a statement on his official Telegram account on Saturday, Khamenei said Tehran alone would decide the timing and conditions for ending any renewed military or terrorist attacks by its enemies. He also ordered the military to update its target list so that US and Israeli physical and non-physical assets fall within reach of Iranian forces, Reuters reported.

The message was blunt. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted him as saying that any kind and level of threat should draw an immediate response. He delivered the remarks at a meeting with senior military officials and urged the armed forces to stay combat ready, according to Iranian state media.

The warning lands at a tense moment. Fears of a return to full-scale fighting have been building since the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran in February, which killed Khamenei’s father and several senior Iranian officials. Mojtaba Khamenei now leads a country that has signalled it will not absorb another round of strikes quietly.

Diplomacy is still running alongside the threats. A Qatari delegation arrived in Tehran on Friday for talks with Iranian officials, the Associated Press reported, while other regional governments have worked to lower the temperature.

Those efforts were on display at a security forum in Bahrain, where leaders pushed for calm. Saudi Arabia’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Waleed ElKhereiji, said countries in the region wanted peace and were working to head off a military escalation and reach an agreement to end the crisis with Iran. “People in this part of the world want to bring peace back to the region,” AP quoted him as saying.

He did not oversell it. ElKhereiji cautioned that the outcome of those efforts remained uncertain.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was far more pointed. Speaking at the same event, he warned that a second round of fighting would be more dangerous and more destructive, and would lead nowhere. His comments reflect a widespread worry across West Asia that renewed hostilities could spread well beyond the original combatants.

The forum also touched on another flashpoint. Syria’s Foreign Minister Assad al-Shibani said border security with Jordan was a shared responsibility and that a high-level meeting between the two sides was expected next month to discuss arrangements. He told the forum there were no skirmishes between the two countries, AP reported.

His remarks followed Jordanian strikes in Syria last week that raised tensions between the neighbours. Jordan said the strikes killed 20 militants from the Islamic State group, while acknowledging that civilians were also killed. Syrian authorities put the death toll at seven, most of them women and children.

Al-Shibani also said Syria was weighing whether to join the Mecca Pact, a Saudi-led defence alliance that includes Turkey and Pakistan. Whether Syria joins or not, he said, the region badly needs a structure that protects its security.

For now, the picture is split. Tehran is hardening its language and widening its list of potential targets, while Gulf and Arab capitals try to keep talks alive. Neither track has produced a settlement. The Qatari mission to Tehran and the calls from Riyadh and Cairo show that regional governments still see a window for negotiation, though none of them is claiming the window will stay open for long.

Khamenei’s order adds a new layer of uncertainty because it removes any stated boundary on where Iran might retaliate. That phrase, without geographic limits, is what regional officials will be reading most closely in the coming days.