Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged “all parties [to] make the right choices” ahead of Iran’s expected attack on Israel, as U.S. officials work to avert the eruption of a regional war.
“All parties must take steps to ease tensions,” Blinken said Monday at the State Department. “It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead.”
Iran has promised to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed last week while attending the Iranian presidential inauguration. President Joe Biden has ordered the movement of “vessels and aircraft across the Middle East” in a bid to deter or intercept an Iranian attack.
“Of course, we prepare for the possibility of further conflict,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier Monday. “We don’t think conflict is inevitable or should be inevitable, or that increased conflict is inevitable. We’re going to continue to work to try to prevent it from happening. But of course we prepare for all possibilities.”
Yet Israeli officials have received a message from Iran that some kind of attack will go forward. “Iran has informed us that it intends to attack Israel,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.
The scope and scale of the attack remain uncertain, but Israeli hospitals reportedly are preparing for “mass casualty” scenarios.
“The drill was successful, preparing us for a total communications blackout,” Israel’s national emergency medical service chief, Eli Bin, told the Times of Israel.
The crisis threatens to bring about the second direct attack on Israel from Iran since Oct. 7, when the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas broke out of Gaza and attacked military outposts and civilian communities across southern Israel — a conflict that contains the potential to convulse the Middle East in a wider conflict between Israel and Iran, its proxy Lebanese Hezbollah, or both.
“Since Oct. 7 we have planned for all of the possible contingencies, including the broadening of this conflict, including the escalation of this conflict,” Miller said. “Our posture as it relates to American citizens in Lebanon today is that we recommend that U.S. citizens who can depart Lebanon find a way to do so.”
In parallel, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, welcomed a senior Russian security official to Tehran to discuss their burgeoning relationship.
“Russia has always been with Iran in difficult times and strengthening relations with such a strategic partner is one of the priorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy,” Pezeshkian said, according to a Russian state media translation.
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Biden’s team has “urge[d] countries to pass messages to Iran,” as Miller acknowledged, but he cast doubt on the idea that Moscow would participate in that effort.
“We don’t have any expectations that Russia’s going to play a productive role in de-escalating tensions,” he said. “We haven’t seen them play a productive role in this conflict since Oct. 7. They have for the most part been absent, and certainly we’ve seen them do nothing to urge any party to take de-escalatory steps.”