A last-ditch attempt to reduce the impact of a potentially catastrophic all-out Israeli land assault on Gaza will be made by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, amid fears that the already daunting Palestinian death toll will rise and provoke an intervention by Iran or its proxies.
He will return to Jerusalem for a second round of talks in five days with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, ending a whirlwind round of shuttle diplomacy designed to stop the conflict spreading. In a sign of the tensions, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned on Sunday: “If the Zionist aggressions do not stop, the hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger.”
