During a meeting in Washington on Monday (January 29th), Antony Blinken remarked, "I can assert that the current situation we are confronting across the region is perhaps the most perilous we've encountered, at least since 1973, and conceivably even preceding that."
On October 6, 1973, a war broke out between Syria and Egypt, supported by several other Arab countries, against Israel, known as the "Yom Kippur War." This unexpected war lasted until October 25, during which over 2,600 Israeli soldiers were killed, and seven thousand were wounded.
Blinken, referring to President Joe Biden's statements regarding the United States' inclination to prevent the spread of war in the Middle East, cautioned: "We will respond forcefully, at a time and place of our choosing, to anyone who seeks to exploit the crisis and war in the Middle East to create further instability and use it as a pretext to attack our personnel."
He added that the US response could be "multi-tiered, multi-phased, and sustained."
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General, also mentioned attacks against NATO forces in Syria and Iraq by the resistance forces amid the conflict in Gaza.
He emphasized that the presence of NATO forces in these two countries is unrelated to the events in Gaza and that these forces are stationed to ensure the non-resurgence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
