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Tuesday, April 16, 2024

WHO's Road To Totalitarianism

 by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Several articles on the proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) international health regulations have appeared here on Brownstone, such as this excellent introduction. Consequently, there is no need to repeat this information in a similar format. What I would like to do instead is to pursue the question, what the implications would be for people worldwide if this organisation were to be successful in getting the representatives of member countries to accept the proposed amendments. More specifically, what are the likely consequences in terms of the concept and practice of totalitarianism?

To understand this, one has to get to grips with the mode of rule called totalitarian government, of course, but I doubt whether most people have an adequate grasp of full-fledged totalitarian rule, despite recently experiencing it to a certain degree under “pandemic” conditions. Should the amendments proposed by the WHO be accepted in May, the citizens of the world would be subjected to unadulterated totalitarianism, however, so it is worthwhile exploring the full implications of this “anonymous” mode of governance here.

This is done in the hope that, if representatives of the people—which is what they are supposed to be—in legislative bodies around the world were to read this article, as well as others related to the same topic, they would think twice before supporting a motion or bill which would, in effect, grant the WHO the right to usurp the sovereignty of member nations. The recent developments in the state of Louisiana in the United States, which amount to the rejection of the WHO’s authority, should be an inspiration to other states and countries to follow its example. This is the way to beat the WHO’s mendacious “pandemic treaty.”

On her website, called Freedom Research, Dr. Meryl Nass has described the WHO’s notion of “pandemic preparedness” as a “scam/boondoggle/Trojan horse,” which aims (among other things) to transfer billions of taxpayer dollars to the WHO as well as other industries, in order to vindicate censorship in the name of “public health,” and perhaps most importantly, to transfer sovereignty regarding decision-making for “public health” globally to the Director-General of the WHO (which means that legally, member countries would lose their sovereignty).

In addition, she highlights the fact that the WHO intends to use the idea of “One Health” to subsume all living beings, ecosystems, as well as climate change under its own “authority”; further, to acquire more pathogens for wide distribution, in this way exacerbating the possibility of pandemics while obscuring their origin, and in the event of such pandemics occurring, justifying the development of more (mandatory) “vaccines” and the mandating of vaccine passports (and of lockdowns) globally, thus increasing control (the key term here) over populations. Should its attempt at a global power grab succeed, the WHO would have the authority to impose any “medical” programme it deems necessary for “world health,” regardless of their efficacy and side-effects (including death).

In the preceding paragraph I italicised the word “control” as a key term. What should be added to it is the term “total”—that is, “total control.” This is the gist of totalitarian rule, and it should therefore be easy to see that what the WHO (together with the WEF and the U.N.) strives for is total or complete control of all people’s lives.

No one has analysed and elaborated on totalitarianism from this perspective more thoroughly than the German-born, American philosopher, Hannah Arendt, and her monumental study of this phenomenon—“The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951 and in enlarged format, 1958) still stands as the authoritative source for the understanding of its historical manifestations. The latter, focused on by Arendt, are 20th-century Nazism and Stalinism, but it is not difficult to perceive its lineaments in what we have been living through since 2020—although a strong case could be made that 2001 marked its identifiable beginning, when (in the wake of 9/11) the Patriot Act was passed, arguably laying the authoritarian groundwork for totalitarian rule as clearly perceived by Henry Giroux.

Arendt (p. 274 of the Harvest, Harcourt edition of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” 1976) singles out “total terror” as the essence of totalitarian government, and elaborates as follows:

“By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; compared to the condition within its iron band, even the desert of tyranny [which she distinguishes from totalitarianism; B.O.], insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom. Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.”

Reading this evocative characterisation of totalitarianism in terms of “total terror” makes one realise anew, with a start, how fiendishly clever the perpetrators of the so-called “pandemic” emergency were—which was no real pandemic, of course, as the German government recently admitted. It was the thin edge of the wedge, as it were, to insinuate “total terror” into our lives by means of curtailing our access to free movement in space. “Lockdowns” are the signature tool for implementing restrictions of free movements in space.

It may not, on the face of it, appear to be the same as, or similar to, the incarceration of prisoners in the concentration camps under Nazi rule, but arguably the psychological effects of lockdowns approximate those experienced by inmates of these notorious camps in the 1940s. After all, if you are not allowed to leave your house, except to go to the shop to buy food and other essentials before you hurry back home—where you dutifully sanitise all the items you bought (a concrete reminder that venturing out in space is “potentially lethal”)—the imperative is the same: “You are not allowed out of this enclosure, except under specified conditions.” It is understandable that the imposition of such strict spatial boundaries engenders a pervasive sense of fear, which eventually morphs into terror.

Small wonder the pseudo-authorities promoted—if not “commanded”—“working (and studying) from home,” leaving millions of people cloistered in their houses in front of their computer screens (Plato’s cave wall). And banning meetings in public, except for a few concessions as far as the numbers of attendees at certain gatherings were concerned, was just as effective regarding the intensification of terror. Most people would not dare transgress these spatial restrictions, given the effectiveness of the campaign, to instil a dread of the supposedly lethal “novel coronavirus” in populations, exacerbating “total terror” in the process. The images of patients in hospitals, attached to ventilators, and sometimes looking appealingly, desperately at the camera, only served to exacerbate this feeling of dread.

With the advent of the much-hyped COVID pseudo-“vaccines,” another aspect of generating terror among the populace manifested itself in the guise of relentless censorship of all dissenting views and opinions on the “efficacy and safety” of these, as well as on the comparable effectiveness of early treatment of COVID by means of proven remedies such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. The clear aim of this was to discredit contrarians who raised doubts over the official valorisation of these supposedly miraculous cures for the disease, and to isolate them from the mainstream as “conspiracy theorists.”

Arendt’s insight into the indispensable function of space for human movement also casts the WEF’s plans to create “15-minute cities” worldwide in a disturbing new light. These have been described as “open-air concentration camps,” which would eventually become a reality by prohibiting movement outside of these demarcated areas, after an initial period of selling the idea as a way of combating climate change by walking and cycling instead of using carbon-emitting motor cars. The WEF and WHO’s “concern” with climate change as a putative threat to global health offers further justification for these planned variations on prisons for the thinly disguised incarceration of millions of people.

The pertinence of Arendt’s thinking on totalitarianism for the present does not end here, though. Just as relevant as the manner in which it cultivates terror is her identification of loneliness and isolation as prerequisites for total domination. She describes isolation—in the political sphere—as “pre-totalitarian.” It is typical of the tyrannical governments of dictators (which are pre-totalitarian), where it functions to prevent citizens from wielding some power by acting together.

Loneliness is the counterpart of isolation in the social sphere; the two are not identical, and the one can be the case without the other. One can be isolated or kept apart from others without being lonely; the latter only sets in when one feels abandoned by all other human beings. Terror, Arendt sagely observes, can “rule absolutely” only over people who have been “isolated against each other” (Arendt 1975, pp. 289–290). It therefore stands to reason that, to achieve the triumph of totalitarian rule, those promoting its inception would create the circumstances where individuals feel increasingly isolated as well as lonely.

It is superfluous to remind anyone of the systematic inculcation of both of these conditions in the course of the “pandemic” through what has been discussed above, particularly lockdowns, the restriction of social contact at all levels, and through censorship, which—as remarked above—was clearly intended to isolate dissenting individuals. And those who were isolated in this way, were often—if not usually—abandoned by their family and friends, with the consequence that loneliness could, and sometimes did, follow. In other words, the tyrannical imposition of COVID regulations served the (probably intended) purpose of preparing the ground for totalitarian rule by creating the conditions for isolation and loneliness to become pervasive.

How does totalitarian government differ from tyranny and authoritarianism, where one may still discern the figures of the despot, and the sway of some abstract ideal, respectively? Arendt writes that (p. 271–272):

“If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.

“Terror is the realization of the law of movement; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of nature or of history to race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action. As such, terror seeks to ‘stabilize’ men in order to liberate the forces of nature or history. It is this movement which singles out the foes of mankind against whom terror is let loose, and no free action of either opposition or sympathy can be permitted to interfere with the elimination of the ‘objective enemy’ of History or Nature, of the class or the race. Guilt and innocence become senseless notions; ‘guilty’ is he who stands in the way of the natural or historical process which has passed judgement over ‘inferior races,’ over individuals ‘unfit to live,’ over ‘dying classes and decadent peoples.’ Terror executes these judgements, and before its court, all concerned are subjectively innocent: the murdered because they did nothing against the system, and the murderers because they do not really murder but execute a death sentence pronounced by some higher tribunal. The rulers themselves do not claim to be just or wise, but only to execute historical or natural laws; they do not apply [positive] laws, but execute a movement in accordance with its inherent law. Terror is lawfulness, if law is the law of the movement of some suprahuman force, Nature or History.”

The reference to nature and history as suprahuman forces pertains to what Arendt (p. 269) claims to have been the undergirding beliefs of National Socialism and Communism, respectively, in the laws of nature and of history as being independent, virtually primordial powers in themselves. Hence the justification of terror being inflicted on those who seem to stand in the way of the unfolding of these impersonal forces. When read carefully, the excerpt, above, paints a picture of totalitarian rule as something predicated on the neutralisation of people, as human beings, in society as potential agents or participants in its organisation or the direction in which it develops. The “rulers” are not rulers in the traditional sense; they are merely there to ensure that the suprahuman force in question is left unhindered to unfold as it “should.”

It takes no genius to perceive in Arendt’s perspicacious characterisation of totalitarian domination—which she relates to Nazism and Stalinism as its historical embodiments—a kind of template which applies to the emerging totalitarian character of what first manifested itself in 2020 as iatrocracy, under the subterfuge of a global health emergency—something well known to all of us today. Since then other features of this totalitarian movement have emerged, all of which cohere into what may be described, in ideological terms, as “transhumanism.”

This, too, fits into Arendt’s account of totalitarianism—not the transhumanist character, as such, of this latest incarnation of the attempt to harness humanity as a whole to a suprahuman power, but its ideological status. Just as the Nazi regime justified its operations by appealing to nature (in the guise of the vaunted superiority of the “Aryan race,” for example), so the group of technocratic globalists driving the (not so) “Great Reset” appeals to the idea of going “beyond humanity” to a supposed superior (non-natural) “species” instantiating a fusion between humans and machines—also anticipated, it seems, by the “singularity” artist called Stelarc. I emphasised “idea” because, as Arendt observes (p. 279–280),

“An ideology is quite literally what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the ‘idea’ is applied; the result of this application is not a body of statements about something that is, but the unfolding of a process which is in constant change. The ideology treats the course of events as though it followed the same ‘law’ as the logical exposition of its ‘idea.’”

Given the nature of an ideology, explicated above, it should be evident how this applies to the transhumanist ideology of the neo-fascist cabal: the idea underpinning the historical process has supposedly always been a kind of transhumanist teleology—allegedly the (previously hidden) telos or goal of all of history has constantly been the attainment of a state of surpassing mere Homo and Gyna sapiens sapiens (the doubly wise human man and woman) and actualising the “transhuman.” Is it at all surprising that they have claimed to have acquired god-like powers?

This further explains the unscrupulousness with which the transhumanist globalists can countenance the functioning and debilitating effects of “total terror” as identified by Arendt. “Total terror” here means the pervasive or totalising effects of, for example, installing encompassing systems of impersonal, largely AI-controlled surveillance, and communicating to people—at least initially—that it is for their own safety and security. The psychological consequences, however, amount to a subliminal awareness of the closure of “free space,” which is replaced by a sense of spatial confinement, and of there being “no way out.”

Against this backdrop, reflecting on the looming possibility that the WHO may succeed in getting compliant nations to accept the proposed amendments to their health regulations, yields greater insight into the concrete effects this would have. And these aren’t pretty, to say the least. In a nutshell, it means that this unelected organisation would have the authority to proclaim lockdowns and “medical (or health) emergencies,” as well as mandatory “vaccinations” at the whim of the WHO’s Director-General, reducing the freedom to traverse space freely to ironclad spatial confinement in one fell swoop. This is what “total terror” would mean. It is my fervent hope that something can still be done to avert this imminent nightmare.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/whos-road-totalitarianism

US Says Over 90 Missiles & Drones Were Launched From Yemen In Past 48 Hours

 New statements from the Pentagon issued Monday have said the Houthis fired over 90 ballistic missiles and drones - most of which were intercepted by US and allied forces over the past 48 hours, once the Iranian attack kicked off in the overnight hours of Saturday.

US Central Command described that at one point during the attack the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile directly against US Navy and commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden. "There were no injuries or damage reported by US, coalition, or commercial ships," CENTCOM said.

Of the 90 total projectiles fired, the CENTCOM says its forces intercepted over 80 drones and at least six ballistic missiles total.

"Iran’s continued unprecedented, malign, and reckless behavior endangers regional stability and the safety of US and coalition forces," CENTCOM said the the statement.

"CENTCOM remains postured to support Israel’s defense against these dangerous actions by Iran. We will continue to work with all our regional partners to increase regional security," it added.

The Houthis are expected to launch another phase of intense attacks in the scenario that Israel hits back at Iran. On Monday Israel's leadership in the war cabinet appears to have greenlighted such a retaliation attack.

On Monday it has also been coming to light to huge degree to which the US and Western allies were key in helping Israel repel the Iranian attack. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Saturday’s Iranian strike on Israel was huge by any standard. Tehran launched more than 170 explosive-laden drones, around 120 ballistic missiles and about 30 cruise missiles, according to Israel. The damage could have been catastrophic. As it turned out, almost all were intercepted.

That success was due to a combination of Israel’s sophisticated air-defense system and critical assistance provided by the U.S. and other Western and Arab partners. American, British and Jordanian warplanes played an especially important role in downing drones. Most of the Iranian drones and missiles were destroyed before they even reached Israeli airspace.

At this point the Middle East is bracing for a potential bigger Israel-Iran war which would likely spread to include Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.

This is why the US and European leaders are busy urging restraint for Israel. A bigger war would also send the price of oil soaring, worsening Biden's reelection chances.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-says-over-90-missiles-drones-were-launched-yemen-past-48-hours

Monday, April 15, 2024

Migrant boat evades surfers in high-speed landing on California beach

 Local leaders from the San Diego area called for more U.S. border enforcement on Monday after a motor boat loaded with migrants navigated between surfers and beached itself in the affluent suburb of Carlsbad, California.

Circulated widely on social media, the video showed the boat running ashore on Saturday, when at least 16 people hopped out and ran to the street where an awaiting SUV took some of them away. Others melded into the residential and commercial district frequented by tourists and locals.

The image of migrants presumed to be entering the country illegally has added fuel to the U.S. immigration debate that is one of the animating issues in the Nov. 5 presidential election between Democratic incumbent Joe Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump.

Elected officials from non-partisan offices in four cities and San Diego County convened a press conference near the Carlsbad site about 50 miles (80 km) north of the Mexican border on Monday, taking turns demanding more border security and criticizing U.S. immigration policy.

"We cannot have people just rushing in on boats onto our shores and going into neighborhoods. We need harsher penalties on human smugglers. We need the state and federal officials to bring more resources, whether it's more Coast Guard or National Guard," County Supervisor Jim Desmond told reporters.

The number of maritime smuggling events off the California coast increased from 308 in 2020 to 736 in 2023, Desmond said, citing U.S. data.

Earlier on Monday, U.S. Representative Mike Levin, a Democrat whose district includes Carlsbad, urged the Republican House leadership to bring to a vote a pre-existing resolution that would double the range in which Customs and Border Patrol agents can operate at sea, from 12 to 24 nautical miles.

Such landings and interdictions at sea are fairly common, but the striking image is rarely captured on video.

One to four such boats are abandoned on San Diego County beaches each week, said Robert Butler, chief executive of TowBoatUS San Diego, the marine salvage company hired to remove them. The boats are typically loaded with multiple fuel tanks but scant evidence of where they came from or who operated them, Butler said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/migrant-boat-evades-surfers-high-014825039.html

China's Q1 GDP grows faster than expected on policy support

China's economy grew faster-than-expected in the first quarter, data showed on Tuesday, offering some relief to officials as they try to shore up growth in the face of protracted weakness in the property sector and mounting local government debt.

The government has unveiled fiscal and monetary policy measures in a bid to achieve what analysts have described as an ambitious 2024 GDP growth target of around 5%, noting that last year's growth rate of 5.2% was likely flattered by a rebound from a COVID-hit 2022.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.3% in January-March from the year earlier, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed, comfortably above analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 4.6% increase and slightly faster than the 5.2% expansion in the previous three months.

On a quarter-by-quarter basis, GDP grew 1.6% in the first quarter, above the forecast for growth of 1.4%.

The world's second-largest economy has struggled to mount a strong and sustainable post-COVID bounce, burdened by a protracted property downturn, mounting local government debts and weak private-sector spending.

Fitch cut its outlook on China's sovereign credit rating to negative last week, citing risks to public finances as Beijing channels more spending towards infrastructure and high-tech manufacturing, amid a shift away from the property sector.

The government is drawing on infrastructure work - a well-used playbook- to help lift the economy as consumers are wary of spending and businesses lack confidence to expand.

China's consumer inflation cooled more than expected in March, while producer price deflation persisted, pointing to subdued domestic demand and reinforcing market calls for more stimulus to spur demand.

The economy was off to a solid start this year, but March data on exports, consumer inflation and bank lending showed that momentum could falter again.

Separate data on factory output and retail sales, released alongside the GDP report, also showed momentum is slowing.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/wrapup-1-chinas-q1-gdp-021903689.html

US Supreme Court lets Idaho enforce ban on transgender care for minors

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let a Republican-backed law in Idaho that criminalizes gender-affirming care for transgender minors broadly take effect after a federal judge blocked it as unconstitutional.

The court granted Republican Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador's request to narrow a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, who ruled that the law violated the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law, while the state pursues an appeal.

The Supreme Court's order allows the state to enforce the ban against everyone except the plaintiffs who challenged it.

Five of the court's six conservative justices concurred with the decision to grant Labrador's request. Its three liberal justices dissented. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts did not publicly indicate how he voted.

Acting in a lawsuit brought by two transgender girls, 15 and 16, and their parents, Winmill blocked the Idaho law, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, days before it was set to take effect on Jan. 1.

The law, one of numerous similar measures passed by Republican-led states in recent years, targets medications or surgical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria, the clinical diagnosis for the distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.

Healthcare professionals under the law can face up to up to 10 years in prison for providing treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones and mastectomies that are "inconsistent with the child's biological sex."

The law does not prohibit such treatments for other medical conditions such as early puberty or genetic disorders of sexual development, if it is consistent with a minor's biological sex.

"The state has a duty to protect and support all children, and that's why I'm proud to defend Idaho's law that ensures children are not subjected to these life-altering drugs and procedures," Labrador said after the Supreme Court acted.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the plaintiffs, said the decision allows the state to shut down care for thousands of families in Idaho.

"While the court's ruling (on Monday) importantly does not touch upon the constitutionality of this law, it is nonetheless an awful result for transgender youth and their families across the state," the ACLU said.

'HIGHLY CHARGED AND UNSETTLED'

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said, "This court is not compelled to rise and respond every time an applicant rushes to us with an alleged emergency, and it is especially important for us to refrain from doing so in novel, highly charged and unsettled circumstances."

The plaintiffs sued in federal court claiming that the law is unconstitutional because it discriminates based on sex and transgender status. The gender-affirming care the plaintiffs are receiving has improved their mental health and enabled them to become "thriving teenagers," a court filing said.

Noting that the law bars transgender minors from medical treatments that other minors can access, Winmill blocked the law because it unlawfully discriminates based on transgender status and sex. The 14th Amendment protects "disfavored minorities" from legislative overreach, the judge wrote.

"That was true for newly freed slaves following the Civil War. It was true in the 20th Century for women, people of color, inter-racial couples and individuals seeking access to contraception. And it is no less true for transgender children and their parents in the 21st Century," Winmill added.

The judge also held that the law violated the protection under the 14th Amendment's due process clause for the fundamental right of parents to access generally available medical care for their children.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the Supreme Court's decision on Monday should put judges on notice not to issue such broad injunctions as Winmill did in this case.

"Lower courts would be wise to take heed," Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. "Retiring the universal injunction ... will lead federal courts to become a little truer to the historic limits of their office."

After the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the injunction, Labrador, backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group, asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-supreme-court-lets-idaho-205521815.html

Iran able to 'handle situation' and spare Middle East more tension: China minister

 China said it believed Iran could "handle the situation well and spare the region further turmoil" while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity, referring to an attack on Iran's embassy in Syria and its retaliatory strike over the weekend.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian via a phone call on Monday that China appreciated Iran's emphasis on not targeting regional and neighbouring countries, according to the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Wang also said he noted Iran had described its actions as limited and carried out in self-defence. China strongly condemns and resolutely opposed the embassy attack, and calls the incident "unacceptable", Wang said.

After briefing Wang on Iran's position, Amir-Abdollahian told Wang that Iran is aware of the regional tensions, is willing to exercise restraint and has no intention of further escalations.

Tensions are high in the Middle East as Israeli military has

pledged

response to Iran's attack, and several countries called for restraint. Since the Saturday night missile attack, numerous countries have summoned the Iranian ambassadors.

Wang also spoke with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister the same day, Xinhua said, stating that China is willing to work with Riyadh to avoid further escalation in the Middle East.

Foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said that Saudi Arabia "highly expects" China to play an active and important role in that regard, and that his country is willing to strengthen communication and coordination with China to promote an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.

Since the war in Gaza began in October, clashes have erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Faisal said Saudi Arabia "fully trusts" China, and is willing to push for the sustainable development of bilateral cooperation, according to Xinhua.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-iran-able-handle-situation-004420822.html

Israeli military pledges response to Iran attack amid calls for restraint

 Israel's military chief said on Monday his country would respond to Iran's weekend missile and drone attack amid calls for restraint by allies anxious to avoid an escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned his war cabinet for the second time in less than 24 hours to weigh how to react to Iran's first-ever direct attack on Israel, a government source said.

Israel's military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said the country would respond, but provided no details.

"This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response," he said at the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel, which sustained some damage in Saturday night's attack.

Iran's attack - launched in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1 - has increased fears of open warfare between Israel and Iran and heightened concerns that violence rooted in the Gaza war is spreading further in the region.

Wary of the dangers, President Joe Biden told Netanyahu the United States will not take part in any Israeli counter-offensive against Iran, officials said on Sunday.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on Oct. 7, clashes have erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Israel said four of its soldiers were wounded hundreds of metres inside Lebanese territory overnight.

It appeared to be the first such known incident since the Gaza war erupted, although there have been months of exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon's armed group Hezbollah.

"We're on the edge of the cliff and we have to move away from it," Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, told Spanish radio station Onda Cero. "We have to step on the brakes and reverse gear."

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron made similar appeals. Washington and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have also issued calls for restraint.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined on Monday to say during a briefing whether Biden urged Netanyahu in talks on Saturday night to exercise restraint in responding to the attack.

"We don't want to see a war with Iran. We don't want to see a regional conflict," said Kirby, adding that it was up to Israel to decide "whether and how they'll respond."

Countries including France, Belgium and Germany summoned the Iranian ambassadors. The French foreign ministry said France was working with its partners to de-escalate the situation.

Russia has refrained from criticising its ally Iran inpublic over the strikes but expressed concern about the risk of escalation on Monday and also called for restraint.

"Further escalation is in no one's interests," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Iran mounted its attack after the April 1 killing in Damascus of seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, including two senior commanders. Israel neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the attack.

Iran's retaliatory attack, involving more than 300 missiles and drones, caused modest damage in Israel and wounded a 7-year-old girl. Most were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome defence system and with help from the U.S., Britain, France and Jordan.

In Gaza itself, where more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive according to Gaza health ministry figures, Iran's action has drawn applause.

Israel began its campaign against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages by Israeli tallies.

G7 MULLS SANCTIONS

In Washington, Biden reiterated U.S. commitment to Israel's security ahead of a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Sudani, speaking alongside Biden, said their views may be divergent about what is happening in the region but they wanted to stop the conflict from expanding.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the Group of Seven major democracies were working on a package of coordinated measures against Iran.

"I spoke to my fellow G7 leaders, we are united in our condemnation of this attack," Sunak said in parliament.

Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7, said it was open to new sanctions against individuals engaged against Israel.

In an interview with Reuters, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said new sanctions would need the backing of all the G7. He suggested any new measures would be focused on individuals rather than whole nations.

"If we need to have more sanctions for people clearly engaged against Israel, supporting for example terrorism, supporting Hamas, it is possible to do it," Tajani said.

Iran's attack has caused travel disruption, with at least a dozen airlines cancelling or rerouting flights, and Europe's aviation regulator reaffirming advice to airlines to use caution in Israeli and Iranian airspace.

Iraqi Airways announced a resumption of flights between Iraq and Iran on Tuesday.

Israel remained on high alert, but authorities lifted some emergency measures that had included a ban on some school activities and caps on large gatherings.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Tehran had informed the United States that the attack on Israel would be limited and for self-defence, and that regional neighbours had been informed of the planned strikes 72 hours in advance.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Monday, however, that no pre-arranged agreement was made with any country prior to the weekend attack.

Kirby said that Iran did not warn the United States in advance of the attack's timeframe or targets, calling reports that Tehran had done so "categorically false."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/europe-joins-us-urging-restraint-101414014.html