Washington called on Tehran to rein in proxy forces Officials sat in separate rooms with Omani intermediaries passing messages LONDON: US and Iranian officials held talks in Oman last week aimed at reducing regional tensions, the New York Times reported. Through intermediaries from Oman, Washington’s top Middle East official Brett McGurk and the deputy special envoy for Iran, Abram Paley, spoke with Iranian counterparts. It was the first contact between the two countries in the wake of Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attack on Israel in April. The US officials, who communicated with their Iranian counterparts in a separate room — with Omani officials passing on messages — requested that Tehran rein in its proxy forces across the region. The US has had no diplomatic contact with Iran since 1979, and communicates with the country using intermediaries and back channels. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war last October, Iran-backed militias — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Syria and Iraq — have ramped up attacks on Israeli and American targets. But US officials have determined that neither Hezbollah nor Iran want an escalation and wider war. After Israel struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus at the beginning of April, Tehran retaliated with hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones. The attack — which was intercepted by air defense systems from Israel, the US and the UK, among others — was the first ever direct Iranian strike on Israel, which has for years targeted Iranian assets in Syria, whose government is a close ally of Tehran. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a news conference this week that the “Iranian threat” to Israel and US interests “is clear.” He added: “We are working with Israel and other partners to protect against these threats and to prevent escalation into an all-out regional war through a calibrated combination of diplomacy, deterrence, force posture adjustments and use of force when necessary to protect our people and to defend our interests and our allies.”