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The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken had phone calls with Benny Gantz, minister of the Israeli War Cabinet, and with the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, to avoid an escalation in the Middle East after Iran’s attack on Israel.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reported on the two calls this Tuesday, in which Blinken “continued to send the message” that The United States opposes the continued escalation of the regional conflict.
“We have been clear that we are committed to the defense of Israel, but we do not want to see, as many members of this Administration have already said, an escalation in the conflict,” Miller said.
The spokesman stated that Saturday’s Iranian attack on Israel was “a clearly escalatory action” and admitted that Tension in the Middle East will remain high as long as the war in the Gaza Strip continues.
Iran attacked Israel on Saturday with the launch of more than 300 drones and missiles in retaliation for the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus earlier this month.
It is still unknown how the Israeli prime minister will respond, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz stated this Monday that “Israel will act with strategic intelligence and respond in the place, time and manner it chooses.”
However, according to analysts, the Israeli response could not be a direct attack against Iran, but against some of its satellite allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen.
The American president Joe Biden assured on Monday that he wants to prevent the conflict in the Middle East from spreading even further. “The United States is committed to Israel’s security. We are committed to a ceasefire that brings the hostages home and prevent the conflict from spreading further than it already has,” he said when meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Chia al Sudani at the White House.
Biden has promised “strong” support for the Israeli government, but asked it to “carefully and strategically” analyze the situation before reacting against Iran to prevent the war from spreading.
The Iraqi prime minister, visiting Washington to discuss the presence of US troops in Iraq as part of an anti-jihadist coalition, called for “moderation”. Iraq has tried to stay out of regional tensions, even as pro-Iran armed groups in the country have carried out a series of attacks on US facilities since October 7.
On the other hand, the White House denied that it had been warned when and where Iran’s attack would take place, which it described as a “stunning” failure. “We have seen information that the Iranians wanted to fail, and that this impressive and embarrassing failure It was deliberate,” declared National Security Council spokesman John Kirby at a press conference. “All of this is categorically false.”
(With information from AFP and EFE)
