EU and US diplomats are holding urgent discussions around the Middle East in a race to try to head off the threat of a full-blown regional war after Israel targeted Hizbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran.

Enrique Mora, one of the EU’s most senior diplomats, was holding critical talks with officials in Iran’s capital on Wednesday after the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which was blamed on Israel, as Brett McGurk, the White House’s top official in the Middle East, held discussions in Saudi Arabia.

The western diplomatic pressure comes as fears over a broader regional conflict soared as Iran and Hizbollah separately vowed to avenge the attacks.

Officials said the talks were focused on convincing Tehran to either not respond or to carry out symbolic action, after Israeli diplomats told western interlocutors that their military did not plan further operations.

Israel has vowed to hold Hamas’s leadership accountable for the militant group’s attacks of October 7, which sparked the wider war in Gaza and drastically ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East, but it did not claim responsibility for the attack in Tehran.

Israel said the Beirut strike, which killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hizbollah commander, was in response to a deadly rocket attack that killed 12 people in the occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.

Mora, who is political director and deputy secretary-general of the EU’s foreign service, has extensive experience of negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme and was in Tehran for the inauguration of new President Masoud Pezeshkian when Wednesday’s attack took place.

“Mora used his interactions with officials of the incoming Iranian administration in Tehran to convey the EU’s position on all issues of concern related to Iran in line with our policy of critical engagement,” said EU foreign policy spokesperson Peter Stano.

The Biden administration on Wednesday held urgent consultations with Israel as well as other allies and partners with influence over Iran to try to pull all parties back from the brink of conflict. US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke with his Jordanian and Qatari counterparts while US defence secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli equivalent Yoav Gallant. McGurk, who was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as part of a previously scheduled trip, will next head to Cairo for further talks related to the Gaza war.

‘Khamenei orders to strike Israel’ – The New York Times

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order.

Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday, shortly after Iran announced that Haniyeh had been killed, said the three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards. They asked that their names not be published because they were not authorised to speak publicly.

Meanwhile, Iran has announced the closure of the airspace until 5 am Malta time, according to sources quoted by Israeli media. Military analysts report that Tehran has also informed Qatar and Saudi Arabia of their intention to carry out an attack on Israel, asking Doha and Riyadh not to allow the use of their airspace to the Jewish State or the United States.

Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of the assassination; Israel, which is at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has neither acknowledged nor denied killing Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. Israel has a long history of killing enemies abroad, including Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders.

Iran, Israel exchange accusations at the UN Security Council

The killing of the Hamas leader was an “act of terrorism” by Israel, Iran’s representative said during a UN Security Council meeting, accusing Israel of ignoring the UN rules of international law.

“Persistent and systematic attacks against Palestinians in Gaza have brought destruction and a deep humanitarian crisis,” he said. “For almost 10 months, several countries, including the United States, have protected Israel from responsibility for the massacre in Gaza,” he added.

On his part, Israel’s representative at the United Nations accused the UN Security Council of “hypocrisy” according to The Guardian. “Where were the condemnations of Hezbollah and its Iranian suppliers for the massacre of the 12 children?” he asked, recalling the attack on the Golan Heights last week.

Israel – he then added – carried out a “precise” attack against Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, whom he described as a “terrorist with the blood of Israelis and many others on his hands”. Israel “will not stand idly by”, but “will respond with great force against those who harm us”, he stressed.

“It has been almost 300 days since Israel launched” its war in Gaza, and has been allowed to wage its battle in the light of day despite Security Council resolutions and calls for a ceasefire by the international community, the Palestinian representative said. “It is not only a humanitarian crisis but an existential crisis,” he added, condemning the killing of the Hamas leader and criticising Israel’s crimes. “Violence and terror are Israel’s only currency. There are no red lines for Israel,” he stressed.

The US will continue to work to avoid a wider war and this “begins with a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, the American representative to the UN said. “We want to avoid an escalation” in the Middle East: “we believe that there is still room and time for a diplomatic solution”.

Japan’s deputy UN representative, Shino Mitsuko, pushed for increased international efforts to prevent a regional conflict. “We fear the region is at the brink of all-out war,” Mitsuko told the meeting in New York on Wednesday evening.

Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the UN, told the council meeting that failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza was responsible for worsening regional tensions. “Countries with major influence must put more pressure and work more vigorously … to put out the flames of war in Gaza,” he said.

“The international community has a choice to make – let it be for peace and security, do not let Israel drag us all to the abyss,” Feda Abdelhady Nasser, Palestine’s deputy UN representative told the council.

Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and camera operator Rami al-Rifi have been killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza.

At least 39,445 people have been killed and 91,073 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and more than 200 were taken captive.

Maduro vows ‘the opposition will never come to power’

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the opposition of having “blood on their hands” for having promoted protests against the proclamation of the victory of the Chavista leader in Sunday’s presidential elections.

Maduro was addressing foreign press journalists in a conference convened in Caracas.

The Venezuelan president assured that “the opposition will never come to power” and reiterated that it had asked his country’s Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the presidential election after opposition leaders disputed his claim of victory, drawing criticism from foreign observers who said the court is too close to the government to produce an independent review.

Maduro told reporters that the ruling party is also ready to show all the vote tally sheets from Sunday’s election.

“I throw myself before justice,” he said outside the Supreme Court’s headquarters in Caracas, adding that he is “willing to be summoned, questioned, investigated”.

This is Maduro’s first concession to demands for more transparency about the election. However, the Supreme Court is closely aligned with his government; the court’s justices are proposed by federal officials and ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathisers.

The Carter Centre, which sent a delegation to Venezuela to monitor the election, criticised Maduro’s audit request, saying the court wouldn’t provide an independent review.

Maduro’s main challenger, Edmundo González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado say they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost.

Maduro insisted to reporters that there had been a plot against his government and that the electoral system was hacked. Asked later during a news conference why electoral authorities have not released detailed vote counts, Maduro said the National Electoral Council has come under attack, including cyber-attacks. “Engineers are fighting right now” to solve those attacks, he said without elaborating.

The government presented some videos that the president said showed people attacking and torching some electoral offices. More than 1,000 people related to some of those attacks have been arrested, officials said Wednesday.

Pressure has been building on the president since the election. The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to release any printed results from polling centres as it did in past elections.

Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race

Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago Wednesday in an interview that The Associated Press said “quickly turned hostile”.

The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said while addressing the group’s annual convention.

Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the US. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. As a US senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting her colleagues’ legislation to strengthen voting rights and reforming policing.

Trump has levelled a wide range of criticism at Harris since she replaced President Joe Biden atop the likely Democratic ticket last week. Throughout his political career, the former president has repeatedly questioned the backgrounds of opponents, who are racial minorities.

Michael Tyler, the communications director for Harris’ campaign, said in a statement that “the hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power.

“Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in,” Tyler said. “Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked during her briefing with reporters on Wednesday about Trump’s remarks and responded with disbelief, initially murmuring, “Wow!” Jean-Pierre, who is Black, called what Trump said “repulsive” and said, “It’s insulting and no one has any right to tell someone who they are how they identify.”

Trump has repeatedly attacked his opponents and critics on the basis of race. He rose to prominence in Republican politics by propagating false theories that President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was not born in the United States. “Birtherism,” as it became known, was just the start of Trump’s history of questioning the credentials and qualifications of Black politicians.

US reaches plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind

The US has reached a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants, according to the Defence Department.

Mohammed, often known as KSM, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 for his alleged involvement in the terror attacks.

In 2008, Mohammed was charged with a list of crimes including conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, and terrorism and material support of terrorism.

The US had said it would seek the death penalty for Mohammed.

Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi have also reached plea agreements, according to the Pentagon. The men agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence instead of a death penalty, according to The New York Times.

The plea agreement avoids what would have been a long and complicated death penalty trial against Mohammed. But it’s unclear where Mohammed and his co-defendants will serve out their life sentences.

“This is the least bad deal in the real world that would ever happen,” said Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert and CNN national security analyst who has written extensively about Osama bin Laden. The government faced the difficult challenge of advancing a case that had stalled over the course of the two decades since Mohammed’s capture in 2003. “They were still in pre-trial hearings,” Bergen told CNN. “Getting some kind of deal is better.”

Photo: Iranian protesters wave Iranian, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags in a demonstration condemning the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran © Vahid Salemi/AP