The United States is seeking a “de-escalation” in the Middle East despite its strikes on Huthi positions in Yemen, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. “We seek to stop the spread of conflict and to create the conditions for de-escalation,” Sullivan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sullivan said that the course of the conflict with the Iranian-backed rebels depended on “those with influence in Tehran and influence in other capitals in the Middle East”. He said that the United States saw a “pathway” to preventing the Gaza war from escalation into a larger conflict. “We are eagerly working with partners throughout the region to try and pursue a pathway. But in the meantime, we have to guard against and be vigilant against the possibility that, in fact, rather than heading towards de-escalation, we are on a path of escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan said. The United States and Britain last week struck Huthi positions in Yemen after the insurgents defiantly attacked ships in the Red Sea in professed solidarity with the Palestinians, disrupting global commerce.