The foreign ministers of the UK, France, and Germany, collectively known as the E3, plus the Italian foreign minister, met in Istanbul, Türkiye on Friday with their counterparts from the R4 grouping — Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The meeting of the two groupings reflected “efforts to strengthen cooperation between European powers and key regional actors amid mounting geopolitical tensions,” reported Hurriyet Daily News.

While Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan have all, to one degree or another, contributed efforts to trying to actually cool down the U.S.-Iran war, the E3 governments, along with the EU, have been doing everything possible to provoke a wider war against Russia. The E3 countries were also accomplices to President Trump’s ripping up of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, so one is left wondering what the real thrust of the E3+R4 will be.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who chaired the meeting, told reporters afterwards that the foreign ministers agreed that any renewed attack on Iran would risk broadening the war and spreading conflict across the region. “Military intervention in Iran is by no means a solution. No one is endorsing it at this point,” he said.

Fidan said all countries represented at the meeting opposed any further escalation and supported efforts to end the ongoing conflicts both in the Persian Gulf and Ukraine. “All the countries around the table want to prevent the war from spreading further. They want the wars in both the Gulf and Ukraine to end,” he said. “They support a ceasefire and believe diplomacy is the only way forward.”