US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged all sides in the Middle East to avoid “escalation,” his spokesman said, as fears grew of an imminent Iranian counterattack on Israel.
“It’s important that all parties take steps over the coming days to refrain from escalation and calm tensions,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters, describing Blinken’s telephone calls with officials in the region.
Blinken spoke Monday to the prime minister of Qatar and foreign minister of Egypt, the two key players in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, days after a suspected Israeli attack killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Asked if Iran had the right to respond, Miller said an Iranian attack would not serve “the interests of the Iranian people or the broader region.”
“The message that we’re consistently sending is, don’t take this step. You don’t need to, it doesn’t serve anything, it only puts the entire region at risk,” Miller said.
Iran fired directly at Israel in April following a strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria, but the United States helped intercept the drones and missiles and damage was minimal.
“That was a moment of real peril for the region, and we were able to chart a path that ultimately got us through that time without tipping into a wider war,” Miller said.
“But every time you have one of these cycles of escalation, you have a risk of parties miscalculating, you have the risk of them taking actions that get out of hand or that have unintended consequences,” he said.
US President Joe Biden has supported Israel in its war on Hamas since the October 7 attack on Israel but has suggested frustration over the timing of the killing of Haniyeh.
With AFP
