European Union foreign ministers emerged from two hours of emergency talks on Sunday night to call for a de-escalation of the violence that left Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dead and the Gulf region plummeting into chaos amid retaliatory attacks, cancelled flights stranding hundreds of thousands of travellers and potential delays along vital oil shipping lines.
"The Middle East stands to lose greatly from any drawn-out war," said a joint statement issued after their video link rendez-vous.
