By Athena Papakosta

The Secretary of State of the United States, Anthony Blinken, completed his second tour of the Middle East which, however, did not bring the desired results for Washington. As he himself admitted while departing from his last stop, Ankara, efforts for humanitarian pauses and preventing the conflict from expanding in the region “remain ongoing”. The next stop is Japan, where it will inform its counterparts in the G7 about Washington’s attitude towards the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

After four days of talks, which began in Israel, it appeared that the United States’ diplomatic effort had reached an impasse. The US Secretary of State has been unable to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision in favor of humanitarian pauses at a time when Israel was further escalating its offensive against Hamas and intensifying its strikes on the Gaza Strip, which was rocked by fresh bombardments and plunged into a new communications blackout. At the same time, trucks carrying humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing were down from 100 last Friday to 30 in the coming days.

“We know the concerns. In Gaza, we see the terrible cost. We see the cost to innocent citizens. We are in contact with the Israelis. We have talked about steps that can reduce civilian casualties.” Mr. Blinken pointed out adding that “we are making very big efforts” to ensure the arrival of large amounts of aid to Gaza.

As reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, diplomats in many Middle Eastern countries that are US allies believe that Blinken could put pressure on Israel to limit its attacks on Gaza by either calling for a ceasefire or withholding US funding. Rather, they explain that the United States refuses to act either because it believes that the destruction of Hamas is an achievable goal at an acceptable cost or because the Biden administration finds it in its best interest to stand with Israel over civilians in Gaza.

Probably the most disturbing dimensionthe newspaper writes, is the gradual disappearance of the power of American diplomacy and the gradual, though so far limited, signs of cooperation between Iran and the Arab states.

It has already been announced that the president of Iran, Ibrahim Raishi, will visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday after Tehran and Riyadh jointly convene an Organization of Islamic Cooperation Summit. In fact, it will be the first visit of an Iranian head of state to Riyadh after the signing of the normalization of relations between the two countries last March.

At the same time, Iran steps up diplomatic efforts with Iranian president to hold talks with Indian PM Narendra Modi calling on him to support the Palestinian side.

Washington, however, “stretches out” other players on the diplomatic chessboard with CIA director William Burns. to succeed Anthony Blinken in Israel and the president of the United States himself, Joe Biden to talk again by phone with Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue of the possibility of ceasefires for humanitarian reasons with the Israeli prime minister himself having already interrogated, however, that there will be no ceasefire from the Israeli side unless all the hostages held by Hamas are first released.