UAE warns US: Time running out to prevent broader Middle East crisis

The United Arab Emirates has called on the United States to support an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza, warning that the risk of a regional conflagration is growing every day as the three-month conflict continues.

“We need a humanitarian ceasefire now; we cannot wait another 100 days,” said Lana Nusseibeh, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United Nations, in an online interview from New York.
“The stakes are high, the war in Gaza is a clear open wound and it will destabilize the region,” she said, adding that the United States could play an important role in easing tensions.

A warning from a key Washington ally marks a new level of concern about a spiral of attacks. Israel, Iran and its proxies. , and US forces in Gaza continue is fighting amid widespread destruction and increasing civilian casualties.

Iran-backed group Hamas, which the United States and the European Union designated a terrorist organization, killed 1,200 people and kidnapped another 240 during its invasion of southern Israel on October 7. In retaliation, Israeli forces displaced most of Gaza’s population of 2 million, killing more than 24,000, according to Hamas-led health officials.

In mid-December, the World Bank estimated that Israeli bombing had damaged or destroyed more than 60 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
President Joe Biden’s administration refrained from calling for an end to Israel’s military campaign, blocking the UN Security Council’s demand for a ceasefire from the United Arab Emirates in December.

Israel’s far-right government has vowed to continue its offensive, rejecting a US-backed proposal by five Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, for the post-war reconstruction of Gaza as dependent on Israel’s support for a Palestinian state.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war, there have been clashes almost every day on the Israeli-Lebanese border between Israeli forces and the Shiite group Hezbollah supported by Iran. Regional tensions have risen sharply since late last year, when Israel carried out a series of assassinations of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian commanders and Iran openly attacked in its proxy war against the Jewish state.
Iran on Saturday blamed Israel for a deadly missile attack on a compound in the Syrian capital Damascus that was home to Iranian military advisers, killing at least five people. The attack follows an Iranian attack earlier this week on what Tehran says is an Israeli intelligence base in Iraq.

The US Central Command also said that Iran-backed militants fired several ballistic missiles and rockets at the al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq on Saturday. Although most of the missiles were intercepted, some hit the base. Several people in the United States are being investigated for traumatic brain injuries and at least one Iraqi soldier has been injured, according to a message posted by Channel X. Meanwhile, Iran-armed Houthi rebels in Yemen are disrupting global trade by attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea despite US-led military sanctions. Attacks by Iran-linked groups against US bases in Iraq and Syria have also intensified.

“If the goal is not to increase extremism and terrorism in our region, this is described as a case study of how not to do that,” Nusseibeh said..