US ramps up diplomacy to avert broader Mideast war

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returns to the region as attacks outside Gaza war zone raise the risk of a wider conflict.

America’s top diplomats are converging on the Middle East as they make a full-court press to prevent the war in the Gaza Strip from sparking a broader, more destabilising regional conflict.

President Joe Biden has sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken and one of his most trusted White House advisers to the Middle East amid a surge in attacks across the region that have increased the risks of any missteps triggering a larger, unpredictable conflagration.

With Blinken arriving in Turkey on Friday to kick off his fourth visit to the region since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October, and with continuing attacks on US forces in the Middle East drawing US military action, the diplomatic mission is gaining urgency.

“He will discuss specific steps parties can take, including how they can use their influence with others in the region to avoid escalation,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in Washington before Blinken’s departure late Thursday.

“We don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy. There are obviously tough issues facing the region and difficult choices ahead.” Blinken’s regional tour will include Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt, in addition to Turkey and Greece.

“The prospects for escalation are significant and I fear that it is going to continue on this trajectory with an incremental worsening of the situation with the increased likelihood of miscalculation,” said Dina Esfandiary, a senior Middle East and North Africa adviser for the International Crisis Group. “The only saving grace right now is that most of the actors involved right now are really shying away from escalation.”

While the US has worked for three months to contain the war in Gaza, the spate of attacks is expanding week by week and the American response becoming more assertive. The Biden administration, which has tried to minimise its direct military role in the region, killed an Iranian-backed militia leader in Baghdad on Thursday in a targeted air strike, a signal of its more aggressive response to attacks on US forces in the Middle East.

Tensions in the Middle East have been steadily rising since Oct. 7, when thousands of Hamas-led militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip and into Israel, where they killed more than 1200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials, and captured more than 200 hostages.

Iranian security officials helped Hamas plan the October attacks on Israel, according to the group, and Hamas fighters received training in Iran in the weeks before Oct. 7, according to people familiar with intelligence related to the attacks. The US designates Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

Israel responded with a military campaign that has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, say health officials in the isolated enclave. The Gaza figures don’t distinguish between civilians and militants.

Iran-backed militants across the region have reacted to the campaign in Gaza with near-daily attacks on Israel from Lebanon, dozens of strikes targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria, and assaults on commercial ships in the Red Sea from Houthi fighters in Yemen. The groups have vowed to continue their attacks until Israel ends its war in Gaza.

Iran has moved a warship into the Red Sea, where American forces have shot down dozens of Houthi drones and missiles in recent weeks. On Wednesday, the US and 12 allies issued an ultimatum to Houthi fighters in Yemen to stop their attacks or face severe consequences. Shipping company Maersk on Thursday said it would continue diverting all traffic bound for the Red Sea around southern Africa instead for the foreseeable future.

Earlier this week, a suspected Israeli strike killed a senior Hamas leader in Beirut following months of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group across the Israeli-Lebanese border. While Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed a response to the killing of Salah al-Arouri in a suburb full of its supporters, he also said the group wouldn’t be dragged into an all-out war. Analysts say Nasrallah has been careful to avoid doing anything that would attract an overwhelming Israeli response.

Meanwhile, twin blasts in Iran on Wednesday killed over 80 people at a memorial for an Iranian commander killed in a 2020 US strike, but there was no retaliation in the 24 hours before Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

Further American diplomacy is essential to avert a broader conflict, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London’s Chatham House think tank.

“We’re in the fog of a simmering conflict that is metastasising,” she said. “The onus is really on the US to try and bring down the temperature.” Blinken will join Amos Hochstein, a top White House energy adviser who brokered a deal to delineate the maritime boundary between Israel and Lebanon, as the US steps up its diplomatic efforts to prevent a wider war.

Israel represents one of the most significant wildcards. The nation’s leaders say they will deliver a decisive military blow to Hezbollah if the militant group doesn’t agree to a diplomatic deal to pull back its forces from the Lebanon-Israel border.

Israel Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday after meeting Hochstein that the chances of a diplomatic solution are fading.

“We find ourselves at a junction – there is a short window of time for diplomatic understandings, which we prefer,” said Gallant, who pushed for a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah in early October. “We will not tolerate the threats posed by the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah and we will ensure the security of our citizens.”

Biden has spoken to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some 16 times since Oct. 7 in an effort to contain the conflict.

One key moment came in an Oct. 11 call in which Biden urged the Israeli leader to call off the proposed pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

Biden has sent a stream of officials to the region for diplomatic talks – from his vice president and Pentagon chief to his secretary of state and Central Intelligence Agency director – all aimed at containing the war in the Gaza Strip.

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, said the Middle East is already in a low-intensity regional war with a real prospect of worsening.

“The problem is no one knows what the threshold is for war,” he said. “Everyone can make a mistake. A missile in the wrong place and the wrong time can escalate. Sometimes, even if you don’t intend to, someone is throwing a match – and there you have it.” Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence officer who now serves as head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center, said the window for diplomatic options may be closing.

“Blinken’s visit may be the last chance to solve the crisis by diplomatic means,” he said. “Right now it seems that the likelihood for a clash is higher than a political solution.”

Suzanne Maloney, director of the foreign-policy program at the Brookings Institution think in Washington, said: “Even if it’s not the worst-case scenario – a full-fledged Middle Eastern war – we have a situation that’s untenable for many of the parties.” Israel is “not prepared to sit by and allow Hezbollah to shrink the borders of the country,” she said.

In Gaza, fighting continued on Friday, compounding a humanitarian crisis. Nearly 85 per cent of the population has been displaced by Israel’s military campaign, seeking safety in a shrinking area of the densely populated enclave.

The Israeli military said it conducted an air strike on a group of Hamas militants who attempted to attack one of its tanks in the Bureij area of central Gaza. In the southern city of Khan Younis, the Israeli military said it struck several launch pads used to fire rockets on Israeli territory.

The Wall Street Journal