CAPRI, Italy: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday refused to comment on reports of an attack by Israel on Iran, beyond saying Washington was \u201cnot involved in any offensive operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to journalists after a meeting with G7 counterparts in Italy, he declined to answer repeated questions about explosions in Iran, and reports that Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to speak to these reported events\u2026 All I can say is for our part and for all the members of the G7 our focus is on de-escalation,\u201d Blinken told a press conference on the island of Capri.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US has not been involved in any offensive operation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters earlier, G7 host Antonio Tajani, the foreign minister of Italy, said Washington had been informed in advance of the strikes, without giving details.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States were informed at the last moment,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cit was just information\u201d passed on \u2014 without saying who by.<\/p>\n
The reports dominated the G7 Friday, with Tajani forced to change the agenda, but little public information emerged.<\/p>\n
In its final statement, the Group of Seven ministers said: \u201cIn light of reports of strikes on April 19th, we urge all parties to work to prevent further escalation. The G7 will continue to work to this end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel had warned it would hit back after Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel almost a week ago, in retaliation for a deadly strike \u2014 which Tehran blamed on its foe \u2014 that levelled Iran\u2019s consular annex at its embassy in Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPRI, Italy: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday refused to comment on reports of an attack by Israel on Iran, beyond saying Washington was \u201cnot involved in any offensive operation.\u201d Speaking to journalists after a meeting with G7 counterparts in Italy, he declined to answer repeated questions about explosions in Iran, and reports …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":63585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63589,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63572\/revisions\/63589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}