CIA director warns “misjudgments” could further escalate conflict in Middle East [Video]

CIA Director William Burns warned Monday of the potential for simmering clashes in the Middle East to spread across the region even as, he said, the U.S. intelligence community had assessed the leaders of Iran and Israel are not looking for “all-out conflict.”

“[W]e face the very real danger of a further regional escalation of conflict,” Burns said during a moderated question-and-answer session at the annual Cipher Brief threat conference in Sea Island, Georgia. He said Israel’s leadership was “weighing very carefully” how it would respond to Iran’s ballistic missile attack last week, but warned that “misjudgments” could still lead to an inadvertent escalatory spiral.

“The Middle East is a place where complicated stuff happens all the time,” Burns said.

A combination of robust intelligence-sharing between the U.S. and Israel, and “strong” integrated air defenses, allowed for the defeatof the large-scale missile attack from Iran on Oct. 1, Burns said. The attack exposed some “limitations” in Tehran’s military capabilities, but he said …