While Israel is still calculating its response against Iran for last week’s attack, this Wednesday the US President, Joe Biden, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called each other for the first time in two months. During the conversation, Biden reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself from Hezbollah and asked to “minimize harm to civilians,” according to the statement sent by the White House hours after the meeting.
Biden has once again insisted to his counterpart on the need for a “diplomatic agreement” to end the Blue Line conflict, as well as emphasized the need to resume negotiations to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. Since the beginning of the year, the United States has taken the lead in the negotiations, which remain stalled and with no results. At the same time, Washington has not stopped sending weapons to Israel throughout this time, breaking a record figure alone in military aid for its partner of at least 17.9 billion dollars, as revealed this Monday. a report published by Brown University.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated this Wednesday that the United States will not allow “Lebanon to become Gaza.” The spokesperson was thus responding to the statements made this Tuesday by Netanyahu, who threatened the Lebanese people with “a long war that will bring destruction and suffering similar to what we see in Gaza” if they did not rise up against the Shiite group Hezbollah.
The statement does not give details about progress in the response to Iran, only that Biden “unequivocally condemns the ballistic missile attack.” Last week, the American president already warned that he would not support a response that involved an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. A few days after drawing this red line, the president also asked his partner not to attack Iran’s oil reserves.
The escalation of recent weeks, with the ground invasion in Lebanon, and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by Israel, has brought the Middle East to the brink of a regional war. Whether the conflict ends up breaking out or not depends on Tel Aviv’s response against Tehran. The United States is trying to ensure that its partner’s response is “controlled” and does not force the ayatollah regime to become more involved in the conflict.
Although the recent development of events, with Israel advancing its offensive in Lebanon while rejecting the proposal presented by the United States for a ceasefire in Lebanon, is not very encouraging. With less than a month until the elections, Netanyahu is taking advantage of the little room for maneuver that the Biden administration has to continue advancing the conflict. Although Washington has never threatened to cut off the supply of weapons, as it did last spring, when Tel Aviv was preparing to invade Rafah against Biden’s requests. The threat, however, was never fulfilled and Netanyahu invaded this enclave in the south of the Strip without opposition.
In fact, Biden’s request to try to “minimize damage to civilians” in Lebanon, without reproaching the offensive on the Arab country, is very reminiscent of the balances that the American already made last April with the Rafah crisis. . On that occasion, Washington made efforts to appeal to the international community to protect the civilian population. The war in Gaza, which has already been running for a year, has already left more than 41,000 Palestinians dead, and in Lebanon there have already been more than 2,000 dead since the attacks by Israel began.
When the Israeli army began its incursion into southern Lebanon, the United States backed the “limited” military operation, claiming that Israel needed to “dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure” on the northern border.
Response against Iran “powerful, precise and surprising”
The Minister of Defense of Israel, Yoav Gallant, assured this Wednesday in a visit to the Army Intelligence Directorate that the Hebrew response to Iran’s massive attack last Tuesday will be a “powerful, precise and, above all, surprising” attack. reports Efe. “They will not understand what happened and how it happened,” Gallant said, according to his office this afternoon.
The Defense Minister defended that the Iranian attack – which consisted of the launch of 180 ballistic missiles against the territory of Israel – was “aggressive” but “not precise.”
The bombing of the Islamic Republic left one dead, despite its magnitude, and it was a Palestinian in the West Bank city of Jericho, who was crushed by the remains of the interception of one of the missiles.
In addition, the armed forces recognized that some missiles managed to hit the center and south of the country, in the vicinity of bases such as Nevatim – in the Negev desert – or Tel Nof – in the center of the country – but since then The authorities boast that they continue to operate.
“The Air Force was unharmed, all runways are operational, our activities continue, not a single plane was damaged, not a single soldier or civilian was injured,” the minister continued, ignoring the Palestinian victim.
On October 1, Iran’s attack sounded alarm bells throughout the country, forcing millions of people to take refuge.
Then, the Iranian authorities claimed the operation as a response to the assassination of the leader of the Shiite group Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, in an Iranian bombing, as well as that of the former political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in another attack in Tehran that Israel never claimed or denied.
The hostilities between the Islamic Republic and the Hebrew State have been framed in recent days by Israel’s offensive of bombings and ground raids in Lebanon – in the south, east and Beirut, the first, and in the south, the second.
This offensive culminates a year of exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah around the border with Lebanon, in the midst of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which leaves more than 2,100 dead in Lebanon, with the vast majority concentrated in the Hebrew attacks of the last two weeks. The Israeli military offensive in Lebanon has also forced the displacement of more than 1.2 million people.
Source: www.eldiario.es
