US would not support Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Biden says | Israel

Joe Biden has said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, as the US sought to soften Israel’s response to Tuesday’s Iranian missile attack and contain a rapidly escalating regional conflict.

Biden’s comments came after Israel’s top diplomat at the United Nations warned that his country’s retaliation for an Iranian salvo of nearly 200 ballistic missiles would be more severe than Tehran “could ever have imagined.” That same day, Israel’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, warned: “We have the ability to reach and attack any point in the Middle East,” a reality that Israel’s enemies would “soon understand.”

There is general agreement in Washington that Israel will mount a military response that will almost certainly go beyond Israel’s only previous airstrikes against Iran, when rockets were fired at an air defense facility near Isfahan following an earlier Iranian airstrike in April this year.

But the Biden administration fears that a full-scale Israeli response, particularly against Iran’s nuclear facilities, could trigger further escalation that could ultimately draw in U.S. forces and potentially lead to an Iranian decision to try to build nuclear weapons.

Almost all of the Iranian missiles that flew in on Tuesday were intercepted by Israel’s multi-tiered air defenses, and the only fatality was a Palestinian killed by falling debris in the West Bank. However, an unspecified number of the rockets landed on or near Israel’s Nevatim and Tel Nof air bases, damaging office buildings and other maintenance areas, but not aircraft or personnel.

Washington first sounded the alarm just hours before Iran’s missile launch on Tuesday night, and since then U.S. officials have been in urgent talks with their Israeli counterparts about their country’s response.

Concerning the devastating impact of nuclear facilities, Israel is reportedly considering a full-scale attack on Iranian oil facilities, as well as airstrikes on military bases or targeted assassinations, which Israel has frequently used in the region. Meanwhile, the US is believed to be proposing its own economic measures against an already heavily sanctioned country to complement Israel’s military response.

Benjamin Netanyahu called a meeting of his top security officials at Israel’s Kirya defense headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the country’s options following a round of talks with Washington.

As Israel considers opening a fourth front with its regional enemies, eight Israeli soldiers were confirmed dead and a significant number injured in three clashes with Hezbollah after Israel launched major land operations across the Lebanese border for the first time since 2006 had undertaken.

The Israeli military said the attacks, which began Tuesday, were aimed primarily at destroying tunnels and other Hezbollah infrastructure along the border. It deployed additional units in the north on Wednesday and issued evacuation warnings to Lebanese residents in more than 20 border towns. They asked them to move across the Awali River, 60 km (37 miles) inside Lebanon, suggesting more ground operations would follow.

Most of the Israeli casualties on Wednesday came from a commando brigade involved in a confrontation with Shiite militia just over the border in the Israeli municipality of Misgav, while two soldiers from the Golani Brigade were killed in a separate incident in Maroun-el-Ras district in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah said its fighters wounded and killed a group of Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon after detonating an explosive device, and claimed it destroyed three Israeli Merkava tanks with guided missiles in the Lebanese border town of Maroun el-Ras. The Guardian was unable to verify the circumstances of any of the incidents.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Wednesday that an Israeli air strike in Damascus killed three people and leveled a building in the Mazzeh district, an area favored by Hezbollah fighters and IRGC officers.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is still fighting Hamas in Gaza almost a year after the outbreak of war. They regularly carry out raids against militants in the West Bank and in the past two weeks have expanded the war on Hezbollah with targeted assassinations and devastating airstrikes across Lebanon, culminating on Tuesday with cross-border incursions by ground troops.

The stated goal of the Lebanon offensive is to create conditions that will allow the more than 60,000 Israeli residents displaced by Hezbollah attacks last year to return to their homes. But the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on Friday triggered Iran’s missile strike on Tuesday in retaliation for the death of Tehran’s closest partner in the region.

The UN Security Council met on Wednesday to discuss the worsening conflict. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “time is of the essence” and that “the deadly cycle of violence that betrays one another must be stopped.”

Iran justified its attack as self-defense in a letter to the Security Council, saying that “in full compliance with the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law, its defensive missile strikes only targeted the regime’s military and security facilities.”

Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon rejected this claim, calling the Iranian missile attack “a calculated attack on the civilian population.”

“Israel will respond,” Danon told reporters. “Our response will be decisive, and yes, it will be painful, but unlike Iran, we will act in full accordance with international law.”

He later added that it was worse than the Iranians “could have ever imagined.”

U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield called on the Security Council to impose “severe consequences” for Tuesday’s attack against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“The Iranian regime will be held accountable for its actions,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And we strongly warn against Iran – or its proxies – taking action against the United States or taking further action against Israel.”

The unfolding crisis comes at a difficult time for Joe Biden, less than five weeks before an election in which he hopes to hand control of the White House to his Vice President Kamala Harris.

While he shows strong support for Israel, he tries to prevent the US from becoming directly involved in a conflict with Iran. He is aware that Israel sees the Iranian nuclear program as a potential existential threat, but cannot do any significant damage to it militarily alone.

“It is a widespread assumption that Netanyahu has insisted throughout his years in power that the United States should be brought into direct military confrontation with Iran, and that this now appears closer to fruition than ever before,” said Daniel Levy , the president of Iran said the US/Middle East Project Policy Institute.

Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, said: “I think Israel’s impressive achievements in both the military and intelligence domains in recent weeks have attracted some in the Biden administration who had previously urged caution “To consider options to go for the jugular now and further weaken Iran and its allies in the region or possibly even target Iran’s nuclear program.”

Vaez warned: “Whether the US is involved or not, such an attack would certainly be the final straw in Iran’s political decision to develop the ultimate deterrent.”