US and EU diplomats are holding urgent discussions around the Middle East in a race to try to head off the threat of a full-blown regional war after Israel targeted Hizbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran, SİA informs via The Financial Times.
Enrique Mora, one of the EU’s most senior diplomats, was holding critical talks with officials in Iran’s capital on Wednesday after the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which was blamed on Israel, as Brett McGurk, the White House’s top official in the Middle East, held discussions in Saudi Arabia.
The western diplomatic pressure comes as fears over a broader regional conflict soared as Iran and Hizbollah separately vowed to avenge the attacks.
Officials said the talks were focused on convincing Tehran to either not respond or to carry out symbolic action, after Israeli diplomats told western interlocutors that their military did not plan further operations.
Israel has vowed to hold Hamas’s leadership accountable for the militant group’s attacks of October 7, which sparked the wider war in Gaza and drastically ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East, but it did not claim responsibility for the attack in Tehran.
Israel said the Beirut strike, which killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hizbollah commander, was in response to a deadly rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on Sunday.
Mora, who is political director and deputy secretary-general of the EU’s foreign service, has extensive experience of negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme and was in Tehran for the inauguration of new President Masoud Pezeshkian when Wednesday’s attack took place.
“Mora used his interactions with officials of the incoming Iranian administration in Tehran to convey the EU’s position on all issues of concern related to Iran in line with our policy of critical engagement,” said EU foreign policy spokesperson Peter Stano.
The Biden administration on Wednesday held urgent consultations with Israel as well as other allies and partners with influence over Iran to try to pull all parties back from the brink of conflict.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Jordanian and Qatari counterparts while US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli equivalent Yoav Gallant.
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