By Athena Papakosta

As Washington is faced with an increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East, the country’s US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is moving to the region.

This is his fourth tour of the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7. The purpose of this new trip to the region is to manage to prevent further escalation as fears of an extension of the conflict have been rekindled in the last 24 hours.

His mission is far from easy and the agenda of his new tour is full of thorns. International criticism of Israel’s military operations in Gaza is already mounting, while the “explosion” of strikes in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and the Red Sea are turning the Middle East into a boiling cauldron.

His task is made even more difficult by the statement of the representative of the National Security Council of the White House, John Kirby, who referring to the killing of No. 2 of the political wing of Hamas, Saleh al-Aruri, emphasized that “no one should drop even a tear” for him.

The United States does not expect every conversation on this journey to be easy.

“There are difficult issues and difficult choices before us. “However, the Secretary of State believes it is the responsibility of the United States to lead diplomatic efforts to address these challenges immediately, and (s. Anthony Blinken) is prepared to do so in the coming days,” State Department spokesman Matthews said. Miller.

Anthony Blinken departed the United States late Thursday. He is expected to visit her Turkeythe Hellasthe Jordanthe Cataractthe United Arab Emiratesthe Saudi Arabiathe Israelthe West Bank and Egypt.

At every station he will look for help and take advantage of the fact that no one wants or has an interest in the war spreading outside of Gaza.

In the back of his mind he keeps that in order to achieve this goal and not to fail in this new attempt of his, new attacks by the Houthi rebels of Yemen against ships in the Red Sea should be prevented, and attacks against Israel by the Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and to achieve and prevent attacks on United States facilities and interests by Iranian-backed paramilitary groups in Iraq and Syria.

Right now Israel has made it clear that it will eliminate Hamas leaders wherever they are while Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis step up their attacks against the US and Israel. As far as Iran is concerned, according to analysts, Tehran is on the winning side since it does not need to do anything dramatic.