Iran's new president on Monday accused Israel of seeking regional war, as he attempted to cast Tehran as restrained and appealed to the West for talks on flashpoint issues.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, inaugurated in late July as a reformist within the cleric-run state, was visiting the United Nations as Israel steps up strikes in Lebanon on the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah, following a wave of explosions on handheld communication devices.

"We know more than anyone else that if a larger war were to erupt in the Middle East, it will not benefit anyone throughout the world. It is Israel that seeks to create this wider conflict," Pezeshkian told a roundtable with journalists in New York.

Pezeshkian -- whose hardline predecessor died in a helicopter crash -- took office with calls for a better relationship with the West.

But tensions immediately soared as the visiting political chief of Hamas, the Palestinian militants who attacked Israel on October 7 last year, was assassinated........

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