US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday from the Philippines that the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East “is not inevitable” after the death of the leader of the Palestinian Islamic terrorist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack in Tehran, which the Iranian regime attributed to Israel.
“I maintain that war is not inevitable… There is room for diplomacy,” Austin said in Subic Bay, the former largest US naval base abroad, in the Philippines, as part of an Asian tour.
The Pentagon chief insisted, as he had done the day before in Manila, that the US was “doing everything possible to avoid a major conflict” and that it was willing to “lower the temperature” of tensions.
“What we said yesterday is that if Israel is attacked, we have defended it in the past and we can be expected to do the same,” he stressed, while emphasizing that he is confident that diplomatic means will prevail.
The Palestinian Islamic terrorist group Hamas confirmed on Wednesday the death of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, where he was on an official visit, and blamed Israel for his death, threatening that “it will not go unpunished.”
Haniyeh “died as a result of a treacherous Zionist raid,” Hamas said in a statement, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.
Israeli authorities have not yet commented on any attack in Tehran, nor on the death of Haniyeh, who was in the Iranian capital yesterday for the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masud Pezeshkian.
Austin is in the Philippines as part of a tour of Asia, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who accompanied the Pentagon chief yesterday in Manila, is in Singapore this Wednesday. Aurora and EFE
