U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took off Monday for his 11th visit to the Mideast in his so-far unsuccessful effort to engineer a cease-fire between Israel and Iran-backed militants since the attack on Israel more than a year ago.
With Blinken planning stops in Israel and "other countries in the Mideast,” according to the State Department, it may be the last chance for the Biden administration to secure a pause in Israel’s multifront conflict with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.
U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein has already landed in Beirut, where he told reporters "we are either going to reach a solution or things are going to escalate out of control.” Hochstein spoke Monday after meeting Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, a key interlocutor between the West and Hezbollah.
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