The President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Vice President and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, spoke by phone this Wednesday with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as confirmed by the White House. Previously, senior officials had indicated that the conversation would focus on Israel’s plans to respond to last week’s Iranian missile attack. Meanwhile, the Middle East holds its breath for what may happen with this retaliation and its consequences.
The telephone conversation, in which the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, also participated, lasted about 30 minutes, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre. The spokesperson describedeitherthe talk as “direct” and “productive,” without wanting to go into the content other than to say that they addressed “a range of issues.”After the leaders of the two countries spoke, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatened a harsh response to the Iranian offensive a week ago, which hit several military bases, but only caused one death, a Palestinian in West Bank. “Unlike the Iranian attack, ours will be lethal and surprising,” Gallant said, according to statements broadcast on public television. The Defense Minister had canceled his planned visit to Washington this Wednesday. It is the prime minister himself, according to local media, who has stopped this movement.
Already in mid-April, Iran launched nearly 300 projectiles and drones at Israel. On that occasion, unlike the attack a week ago, it neither impacted military infrastructure nor caused fatalities. The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araqchi, traveled this Tuesday to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two other regional actors with whom he addresses the regional escalation. Tehran has already warned that it will respond to a hypothetical Israeli attack. The meetings in those two countries will address “regional unity and cooperation to ensure peace in the Middle East, the ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as bilateral issues,” according to an official Iranian source detailed to the Reuters agency.
Wednesday’s conversation was the first time in seven weeks that Biden and Netanyahu spoke directly. The last occasion was in August, before tensions soared between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran, sponsor of this radical Lebanese Shiite militia. The relationship between the leaders of the United States and Israel has deteriorated throughout the year of war in Gaza, as Netanyahu ignored Washington’s recommendations for moderation, without a Biden in the twilight of his mandate wanting to resort to its great pressure tool to contain its ally: the withdrawal of American military aid, without which Israel could not continue its offensive.
Before the call to three, Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with a group of American Jewish associations, whose representatives insisted on the message that the global enemy is Tehran and that it is Israel that acts as a retaining wall. “There is only one force in the world fighting Iran right now. There is only one force in the world that stands in Iran’s path to conquest. And that force is Israel. If we don’t fight, we die. But it is not just our fight, it is the fight of the free world, and I would say the fight of the civilized world,” said the president, according to a statement from his office.
“Hundreds or thousands of missiles”
A senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard has assured that the regime is ready to deploy much larger operations than those of last week if it is necessary to respond to Israel, the Qatari network reports. Al Jazeera. “If we reach 200 there [la semana pasada]”We are now prepared to impact hundreds or thousands of missiles on their occupied territories and reach their security, military and economic centers,” threatened Ebrahim Jabbari, advisor to the head of the Revolutionary Guard.
Israel has promised a devastating blow against Iran after that country launched nearly 180 missiles at it on October 1 in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the assassination of the leader of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah. The Iranian attack did not leave any Israelis dead, although it did leave one Palestinian dead in the occupied West Bank, but it did manage to damage two air bases. The prospect of a far-reaching Israeli retaliation keeps the region in suspense, fearing that the crisis could degenerate into a full-blown war involving Tehran and Washington. Iran has promised to respond to any Israeli aggression.
The White House, which claims it received no prior notice of Israeli plans to attack Nasrallah, wanted to ensure in the call with Netanyahu that the government’s plans are appropriate.
Last week, Biden ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a step with unthinkable consequences and technically very complex without American collaboration. At first, he also seemed to indicate that they were talking about bombings of the Islamic regime’s oil infrastructure, declaring: “We are talking about that.” The next day, and after his comment had skyrocketed the price of oil, the US leader clarified that he recommended that Israel consider objectives other than the Iranian crude oil wells. It also indicated that until that moment Israel had not decided what its precise response would be.
Already in mid-April, Iran launched nearly 300 projectiles and drones at Israel. The Israeli retaliation, then, was measured and punctual to avoid an escalation that, in the current situation and after Gallant’s words, seems closer.
In Wednesday’s call, the leaders were also scheduled to discuss the war in Gaza and the situation in southern Lebanon after Israel launched a “limited” invasion against Hezbollah last week. In the last few days alone, the deaths in that country have risen to more than 2,000 and the displaced have risen to more than a million.
Neither Iran nor the United States have any interest in being dragged into a war in the Middle East, at a difficult time for both. Tehran does not want to be immersed in a conflict with no prospects for victory when it has on the horizon the succession of its spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, 85, and faces serious internal discontent. Washington is in the middle of the electoral countdown and has no appetite to expand its military presence in a region where throughout the first three years of Biden’s mandate what it sought was, precisely, to reduce it to a minimum.
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the great objective of the White House has been to prevent the conflict from spreading to other parts of the region, but the opening of the new front on the border with Lebanon, the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran and the shattering of prospects for a ceasefire agreement in the Strip appear to have reduced those aspirations to ashes.
