America’s top diplomat will visit Israel, the Palestinian Authority base in the occupied West Bank and five Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department said.
He is scheduled to meet his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday.
He will fly to Greece later that day.
“We don’t expect every conversation on this journey to be easy. It is clear that the region is facing complex problems and difficult decisions await,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
“However, the secretary believes that the United States of America must lead diplomatic efforts to address these challenges,” he said.
In previous trips, A. Blinken tried to stop the spread of the war. But it is returning to a region where Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Iran regularly exchange fire.
A top Hamas official was killed in a suspected strike in Lebanon on Tuesday, while Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fired on ships in the Red Sea in a show of solidarity with Palestinians fighting in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, Iran suffered one of the deadliest attacks since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with two explosions killing at least 84 people at a memorial for a slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general.
Tehran initially blamed Israel and the United States, but the Islamic State (IS) group later claimed responsibility.
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2024-07-08 17:10:14
