World fears escalation in Middle East

DUBAI/PARIS — The international community was concerned on Friday following reports that Israel earlier carried out revenge strikes on Iran, as fears of a major regional spillover from the Gaza conflict have since soared.

Early on Friday, Iran fired air defenses at a major air base and a nuclear site near the central city of Isfahan after spotting drones, media reported.

No Iranian official directly acknowledged the possibility that Israel had attacked, and the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.

Tensions have been high since the assault on Israel last week amid the conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the apparent Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Iranian military officers on April 1.

Iran responded by launching hundreds of drones and missiles to attack Israel in an unprecedented assault.

In a statement after a meeting on the Italian island of Capri, foreign ministers from the G7 — Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Japan and Canada — urged "all parties" to "work to prevent further escalation".

The group said it was "ready to adopt further sanctions or take other measures, now and in response to further destabilizing initiatives".

Speaking at the meeting, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the US received "last-minute" information from Israel about the attack on Isfahan. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not dispute that, but said: "We were not involved in any offensive operations."

The apparent attack came on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's 85th birthday. Israeli politicians also made comments hinting that the country had launched an attack.

Notably, Iran referred to the incident as an attack by "infiltrators", rather than by Israel, obviating the need for retaliation, Reuters commented.

A senior Iranian official said there were no plans to respond against Israel for the incident. "The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more toward infiltration than attack," the official said.

Life continues as normal

Meanwhile, Iranians woke up to reports on state TV apparently intent on minimizing the impact of the strikes, with reporters emphasizing that daily life was continuing as normal in Isfahan.

"Calm prevails in Iran's Isfahan, people mock report of Israeli attack," wrote Tasnim News Agency in a headline above an image of two people on the city's beloved Zayandeh Roud river in a pedalo shaped as a swan.

Jonathan Lord, head of the Middle East security program at the think tank Center for a New American Security, said Iran's response "seems to indicate that Iran is seeking to step down off the ledge, minimize the impact of the attack, and perhaps walk back down the escalation ladder from here".

"We seem to be at a moment when both sides are seeking to exit the current escalatory cycle, with Israel conducting a very limited attack to demonstrate some response to the Iranian strikes and Teheran quickly playing down the incident in order not to be compelled to respond," Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.

"For the moment, neither side want a direct war."

Agencies - Xinhua