A former British ambassador to Lebanon has urged UK nationals still in the Middle Eastern country to get out of it now.

Tom Fletcher, who served in that role between 2011 and 2015, said it is not yet clear “where or when” an attack will come, nor who will strike first between Israel and the Lebanon-based and Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.

However, appearing on the News Agents podcast, he said: “I think you have a combination of things. You’ve got that dialling up, that sense of an eye for an eye that is going on at the moment but you have also got these very overt belligerent threats from both sides that they are ready to escalate.”

During the programme, Mr Fletcher confessed his love for the country and how often he has advised people to visit Lebanon.

However, signalling tensions between Israel and Hezbollah may soon boil over, Mr Fletcher is now “saying to friends and other people who are asking me [that] it’s time to get out”.

On the weekend, the Foreign Office repeated a call for UK nationals to leave Lebanon and confirmed preparations were underway to help with an evacuation of the country if necessary.

Mr Fletcher added: “Listen to these warnings. They are serious warnings. Get out on commercial means.

“Of course, there is a great plan in place. I talked to our ambassador last night, a brilliant ambassador with a great team, and lots of experience.

“I remember this very well. We road-test this plan again and again. It must be the most tested UK Foreign Office crisis plan out there. But even with that in place, people should be getting on the plane now.”

There are an estimated 16,000 Britons are in Lebanon, according to a statement made to the House of Commons last week by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Hundreds of troops have been reportedly sent to Cyprus, home to the RAF Akrotiri base, and hundreds more have been put on notice, ready to be deployed to the Middle East if necessary.

The Foreign Office said military personnel were in the process of deploying to provide operational support to UK embassies in the region, without mentioning the number of troops involved.

Tensions have been high in the Middle East since the October 7 terror attack launched by Hamas on Israel, which resulted in the killing of around 1,200 people and kidnapping of more than 250. Following the harrowing massacre, Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Hezbollah, one of Iran’s proxies, pledged their support to Hamas and have been involved in skirmishes with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in northern Israel for several months.

Fears of a regional war in the Middle East erupted in April, when Iran launched for the first time drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles against Israel to retaliate after an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria, which Tehran accused Israel of being responsible for.

While Israel responded to the attack by launching airstrikes targeting an Iranian air defence facility, the limited military move was understood as a successful attempt to deter Iran while avoiding further escalation.

But tensions reignited once again following Israel‘s attack in Beirut, which killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr, and the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, for which Jerusalem has not claimed responsibility. The Israeli strike in Beirut was a response to a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Golan Heights.

Asked whether the tensions may subdue once again as it happened in April, Mr Fletcher said: “Maybe we are in the same scenario. Maybe everyone can agree that there will be a bit of a tit-for-tat, that the Iranians will choose a target that matches the losses that they have, but things are really on a knife edge, it’s a very, very risky strategy. And in the midst of all of that, there is such danger of miscalculation.

“I still think that Hezbollah themselves don’t want this conflict to escalate. They know the risks that lie ahead if they do. I think the communities in northern Israel also don’t want this to escalate because they understand the risk of that too.

“The danger is of misstep if people are playing this game of bluff and counter-bluff and are pushing too far.”