World powers are striving to prevent a wider outbreak of conflict in the Middle East after Iran’s attacks on Saturday night, which involved hundreds of missiles and drones, the first time Iran has directly attacked Israel after decades of confrontation by proxies.
Iran launched the attacks in response to a presumed Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, which killed two generals and several other Iranian officers.
More than six months into a war between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas that has seen flare-ups in violence across the Middle East, diplomats are searching for a way to avert direct battle between Israel and Iran.
The Iranian missiles and drones launched on Saturday were mostly shot down by Israel and its allies, and caused no deaths and only minor damage. But Israel says it must retaliate to preserve the credibility of its deterrants. Iran says it considers the matter closed for now but will retaliate again if Israel does.
“It’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act,” Cameron told reporters early in his visit to Jerusalem. “We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.”
Washington and other Western governments hope new economic sanctions against Iran will help persuade Israel to limit the scope of its retaliation. Cameron said Britain wanted to see coordinated sanctions against Iran by the Group of Seven big democracies, which are meeting this week in Italy.
Since Hamas fighters precipitated the war in Gaza by attacking southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies, clashes have also erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups based in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Inside Gaza, Israel has launched a massive air and ground war, with nearly 34,000 Palestinians confirmed killed according to Palestinian medics, and thousands of others feared dead, still lost among the ruins.
Apart from a single week of ceasefire in November during which around half of the hostages were freed, diplomats have so far failed to hammer out terms for a longer truce, much less an end to the war.