The U.S. will not back Israel in a counterattack on Iran, President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call overnight Saturday into Sunday after Iran launched 300 missiles and drones at Israel.
The conversation’s details were first reported by Barak Ravid of Walla, an Israeli news website. Ravid reported (translation via Google Translate):
US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Netanyahu in their phone call tonight that the US will not support an Israeli attack on Iran and will not take part in it, a senior White House official said this morning (Sunday).
…
“You won a victory today. Be content with this victory,” Biden told Netanyahu, according to a senior White House official.
The official in the White House said that when Biden told Netanyahu that the US opposes an Israeli attack on Iran and that it would not take part in such a move, Netanyahu said he understood that.
The U.S. and Israel have conducted joint air drills that simulate an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as recently as last August.
And last week, Biden said that the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security was “ironclad.”
But the Biden administration has frequently backed away from such assurances. In October, Biden said that his support for Israel’s war against Hamas was “unwavering,” but he has been trying to dissuade Israel from entering Rafah to destroy the last Hamas battalions.
The Biden administration has also sought a renewed nuclear deal with Iran, and has issued waivers on sanctions that have allowed Iran to benefit from billions of dollars.
The White House appears to hope that Israel will be satisfied with its successful defense against the Iranian response to the April 1 Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian officials in Syria, two of whom were generals who had directed attacks on Israel by Iranian terrorist proxies.
Israel said last week that it would respond to any attack by Iran from Iranian territory with an attack on Iran.
In addition, Israel may want to use the attack as an opportunity to target the Iranian nuclear program, or the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist militia in southern Lebanon, which has been firing at Israeli towns for months.
But Biden seems determined to avoid a possible escalation — especially during an election year.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he is prepared to go to war without U.S. backing against Israel’s enemies, including Iran.
Biden also appeared determined to dissuade Israel from a counterattack by describing Iran’s attack, in a public statement, as having been aimed at military targets.
There is no available evidence that civilians were not also targeted, and the only Israeli casualty was a civilian — a seven-year-old Israeli Arab Bedouin Muslim girl, who was badly wounded in by shrapnel in the southern town of Arad.
The U.S. joined in helping Israel eliminate Iranian drones, as did the U.K. and the Jordanian air force.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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