Companies warned to plan exit strategies as fear of Israel-Gaza war escalation increases

But Tobias Borck, an expert on Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, said Iran and groups it supports appeared so far not to be seeking an escalation of the conflict. “Almost all governments across the region are in a consensus that they would like to contain this conflict. At this stage, I even think that it seems like Iran is in that consensus, too,” he said. But he said it would be wrong to think of groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis as “sitting by the phone waiting for Tehran to ring to tell them what to do”.