Reporter Asks Blinken If He Thinks Iran and Israel Will Avoid ‘A Big War Breaking Out’ After Strike

Hours after the news that Israel carried out a strike inside Iran, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken took questions about the development while in Italy for the G7. On Friday, he confirmed that the United States was not involved in the attack.

Blinken took questions from reporters, including one from an Italian reporter who asked if he was “optimistic” that “a big war breaking out” was not a possibility in this case. Here was his response:

All I can say is that for our part and for the entire G7, our focus has been on de-escalation, on avoiding a larger conflict. And actually, that’s been true since day one, after the horrific events of October 7th. A big part of our approach has been to prevent the conflict from spreading, to avoid escalation everywhere. And that’s a common policy across the G7. And it’s, very much our approach now. So we’ve been engaged in efforts to avoid escalation. Those efforts will continue.

Italy plays a critical role in this as a leading country, as a country that’s engaged around the world with many other countries that have their own relationships with countries involved in the Middle East. Italy has its own direct engagements. And I think what we’ve seen over the past ten days or so, couple of weeks, is that those engagements have been and remain very important to keeping things calm, to avoiding escalation, to preventing a larger conflict.

Watch the video above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!