White House ‘working around the clock’ to forestall battle in Middle East

US President Joe Biden held crisis talks on Monday on a potential Iranian counterattack on Israel as his administration said it was working around the clock to avoid all-out war in the Middle East.

Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are engaged in frantic diplomacy to try to ease tensions sparked by a suspected Israeli strike that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week. 

Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility, but Iran has vowed to seek retribution, stoking fears that violence in the Middle East could spiral out of control. 

Those fears grew yesterday after Tehran claimed that it has the ‘legal right’ to respond to Haniyeh’s assassination, with foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani telling a news conference: ‘No one has the right to doubt Iran’s legal right to punish the Zionist regime.’

In a desperate bid to ease tensions, Biden yesterday called King Abdullah II of Jordan, who helped down Iranian drones and missiles in an earlier showdown in April, while Blinken called top officials in Qatar and Egypt, the key intermediaries seeking a ceasefire in the 10-month Israel-Hamas war.

‘We are engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message – all parties must refrain from escalation,’ Blinken said after joining other top officials in a White House meeting.

‘It’s also critical that we break this cycle by reaching a ceasefire in Gaza,’ said Blinken, who has also spoken since Sunday with G7 counterparts and Iraq‘s prime minister.

On Monday, multiple US personnel were injured in a rocket attack on a base in Iraq, adding to the already heightened regional tensions.

Biden had been hoping in his final months in office to end the Gaza war and work on clinching a landmark deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, he has boosted the US military presence in the Middle East in a show of strength to Iran.

After staunchly backing Israel’s war against Hamas, Biden has made clear his frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the killing of Haniyeh, who was involved in the ceasefire negotiations.

Blinken, who has warned that Iran could strike soon, made a new pitch for Biden’s ceasefire plan that would freeze fighting in Gaza and return hostages seized in the October 7 mega-attack on Israel by Hamas.

A ceasefire ‘will unlock possibilities for more enduring calm, not only in Gaza itself, but in other areas where the conflict could spread,’ Blinken said as he met Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

In a veiled allusion to US frustrations, Blinken said, ‘What it really comes down to, really, is all parties finding ways to come to an agreement, not look for reasons to delay or to say no.’

‘It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead,’ he said.

Biden met in the White House’s heavily secured Situation Room with his national security team including Vice President Kamala Harris.

He flew to the White House after a weekend home in Delaware, and after a kiss for First Lady Jill Biden, he headed straight into the Oval Office without commenting to reporters.

The White House said that Biden and the Jordanian king in their call ‘discussed their efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, including through an immediate ceasefire and hostage release deal.’

King Abdullah called for ‘an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the catastrophe in Gaza’ and for ‘ceasing all escalatory measures,’ according to a readout by the Jordanian royal court.

Iran fired directly at Israel in April, taking their long shadow war into the open following a strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria.

The United States helped intercept the drones and missiles, and damage was minimal.

But Jordan – in a delicate position with its large Palestinian population and a peace deal with Israel – has insisted it does not want to be a battleground.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that in April, ‘we were able to chart a path that ultimately got us through that time without tipping into a wider war.’

‘But every time you have one of these cycles of escalation, you have a risk of parties miscalculating, you have the risk of them taking actions that get out of hand,’ Miller told reporters.

The suspected Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh on Iranian soil has also pushed Tehran further towards Russia.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian – whose swearing-in ceremony was attended by Haniyeh hours before his death – told a senior ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin on Monday that Tehran was determined to expand relations with its ‘strategic partner Russia’.

Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s security council and former defence minister, met Iran’s president and top security officials as the Islamic Republic weighs its response to the killing of a Hamas leader.

‘Russia is among the countries that have stood by the Iranian nation during difficult times,’ Pezeshkian told Shoigu in a meeting, Iranian state media reported.

The president said that shared positions between Iran and Russia ‘in promoting a multipolar world will certainly lead to greater global security and peace’.

Russia is one of many countries that condemned Haniyeh’s assassination and called on all parties to refrain from steps that could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war.

In further comments reported during the meeting with Shoigu, Pezeshkian said Israel’s ‘criminal actions’ in Gaza and the assassination of Haniyeh ‘are clear examples of the violation of all international laws and regulations’.

Though Putin has yet to comment in public on the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, senior Russian officials have said that those behind the killing of Haniyeh were seeking to scuttle any hope of peace in the Middle East and to draw the United States into military action.

Iran backs Hamas, which is at war with Israel in Gaza, and also the Lebanese group Hezbollah, whose senior military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut last week.