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Talks with Iran, water supply in Gaza: US' latest update on Israel-Hamas war
Israel-Hamas War: Israeli forces prepare an expected ground assault in response to last weekend’s surprise attack by Hamas.
White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that the US has held back-channel talks with Iran in recent days to warn the country against escalating the conflict in Israel. This comes as Israeli forces prepare an expected ground assault in response to last weekend’s surprise attack by Hamas.
“We have means of communicating privately with Iran, and we have availed ourselves of those means over the past few days to make clear privately that which we have said publicly,” Jake Sullivan said on CBS News’s Face the Nation.
The US couldn’t rule out that Iran might intervene in the conflict, and was monitoring both the possibility of direct involvement by Tehran and proxy activity by Hezbollah across the border with Lebanon, he said after the US announced that it was sending the USS Eisenhower carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean as tensions escalate in the region.
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Jake Sullivan said that the US didn’t have specific new intelligence suggesting a greater risk of escalation, but Iran warned that if Israel’s “war crimes and genocide are not halted immediately, the situation could spiral out of control.”
There would be “far-reaching consequences,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations posted on X (formerly Twitter).
The US national security adviser also told CNN that Israeli officials have informed him that water pipes in southern Gaza have been turned back on.
"I have been in touch with my Israeli counterparts just within the last hour who reported to me that they have, in fact, turned the water pipe back on in southern Gaza," he said. Israel had halted the flow of water as part of its siege of Gaza since the war broke out last weekend.
