Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said Monday that the risk of an unintended escalation in the Middle East looms as “a very real danger,” even though the US maintains its assessment that neither Iran nor Israel “is looking for an all-out conflict.”
Israel is “weighing very carefully how it’s going to respond to the most recent Iranian ballistic missile attack,” Burns said at a national security conference in Sea Island, Georgia, declining to speculate on what form that retaliation might take.
“I think all of us are acutely aware of the consequences of different forms of strikes and consequences for the global energy market and the global economy,” he said.
US President Joe Biden said last week that he would not support Israel striking Iranian nuclear facilities, but it is not clear whether the US has successfully persuaded Israel to take that option off the table; markets have also been on edge due to the possibility that Israel could choose to strike oil facilities in Iran.
The greatest risk of escalation, Burns said, comes from “misjudgments,” what he termed “the ‘stuff happens’ category.”
“You can see the potential for inadvertent collisions, misunderstandings, actions that take on the life of their own,” he said.
On Iran, he said, the supreme leader continues to be the “ultimate decision-maker,”and said his agency has not detected “any kind of dramatic change of tone there.”
Burns also said he continues to hold out some hope that a successful deal can be reached between Israel and Hamas that could result in the release of the remaining living hostages. But those negotiations, he said, have “been pushing a very big rock up a very steep hill.”
“We’ve come close at least a couple of times, but it’s been very elusive,” he said.
