The Biden administration on Sunday congratulated Israel \u2014 along with itself and allies \u2014 on their \u201cspectacular\u201d success in fending off an unprecedented barrage of more than 300 Iranian missiles and armed drones, even as it made clear its desire for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s coalition government to declare victory and refrain from striking back.<\/p>\n
The United States remains \u201ccommitted to defending Israel,\u201d a senior administration official said, and \u201cwhat you saw last night,\u201d as Israeli air defense \u2014 supplemented by U.S. planes and warships \u2014 shot down 99 percent of the Iranian fires, \u201cis what that means in practice. \u2026 We are ready to do it again if we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this official and others who spoke in official briefings, background interviews and on television throughout the day, emphasized that the United States would not participate in any offensive Israeli response against Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur aim is to de-escalate regional tensions\u201d and prevent the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza from becoming a wider conflagration, the senior official said.<\/p>\n
The attack, launched from Iranian territory and by its proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, came after two tense weeks during which Iran publicly promised it would retaliate for Israel\u2019s deadly airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria on April 1. The likelihood of an unprecedented direct Iranian attack on Israel quickly consumed the administration, overshadowing concerns about the dire situation in Gaza that had brought President Biden to warn he might have to reconsider U.S. policy toward Israel.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials on Sunday expressed conviction that the Iranian attack could turn the tables in terms of widespread international criticism over its actions in Gaza, earning them sympathy as a victim of an Iranian government that is arguably equally unpopular. But there is little sign of progress in efforts to impose a cease-fire in Gaza, where Hamas over the weekend rejected the latest offer from Israel for at least a temporary pause in its offensive in exchange for the release of Hamas-held hostages. A Hamas statement reiterated demands for a full cease-fire and immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces.<\/p>\n
Biden has been facing criticism from both the left \u2014 who have condemned his staunch support of Israel, and lack of sympathy for Palestinian victims in Gaza \u2014 and from the right \u2014 who have disparaged some of the harder lines he has taken more recently with Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
In the face of a direct Iranian threat and to demonstrate what he has long called America\u2019s \u201cironclad\u201d commitment to Israel\u2019s defense, Biden 10 days ago instructed U.S. military officials to protect it to the \u201cmaximum extent possible.\u201d Lines of U.S.-Israel military and government communication, grown increasingly strained over the past six months of Israel\u2019s offensive action in Gaza, were suddenly opened full-throttle.<\/p>\n
As his national security team briefed him during last week\u2019s state visit from Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, Biden authorized more U.S. military deployments to the region, including an additional missile destroyer, amid rising fear that an Iranian attack could spiral the region out of control.<\/p>\n
When it became clear the attack was imminent, the president rushed back to the White House on Saturday afternoon from his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He spent much of the evening with senior national security aides in the Situation Room watching and being briefed on Iranian launches and subsequent shootdowns in real time, with more than 100 ballistic missiles over the sky at one point.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could imagine those tense moments,\u201d said one of the officials in the room who briefed reporters Sunday.<\/p>\n
Officials described the action in the skies of the Middle East as a ballet of highly coordinated maneuvers requiring deconfliction of antimissile fires from Israel, U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean and a U.S.-manned Patriot missile defense battery in Iraq, while Israeli and U.S. aircraft shot down explosive drones. Most of the interceptions, Israeli and U.S. officials said, were before the missiles had reached Israeli airspace.<\/p>\n
What is considered an offensive strike can be elastic within the Pentagon, allowing the Biden administration to take preemptive military action but describe it as defensive in nature. For instance, U.S. forces targeted Houthi missile sites over the past several months before they could launch missiles against shipping in the Red Sea, saying the operation was meant to protect potential targets from attack.<\/p>\n
At around 9 p.m., Biden spoke with Netanyahu, who was with his own war cabinet in Israel\u2019s war room monitoring the situation. \u201cIt was shortly after we believed the attack was largely defeated,\u201d said the senior administration official. \u201cBoth leaders had just gone through ten days of preparations\u201d and seeing the results, \u201cwe were feeling pretty good about where we were.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. officials characterized the scope of the Iranian attack as at the \u201chigh end\u201d of what they had anticipated, and intended \u201cto cause significant damage and death.\u201d But very few Iranian weapons had reached the ground in Israel, causing only minor destruction.<\/p>\n
After congratulating Netanyahu, Biden noted that their success had created \u201cspace and flexibility for decisions on next steps.\u201d He advised Israel to \u201cslow things down and think through\u201d how to respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very useful call just to kind of talk through where we are,\u201d the senior official said. \u201cNobody wants to run up the escalation ladder here.\u201d While any response \u201cis a calculation the Israelis have to make \u2026 we think that in the overall exchange the Israelis came out clearly very much on top and demonstrated their ability to defend their country in coordination\u201d with the United States and with participation from Britain, France, Jordan and others. \u201cThe big question is not only what, but whether Israel chooses\u201d to respond, the official said. \u201cThe president and the prime minister really were thinking through strategically where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
This official and others emphasized that the United States would not be part of any Israeli offensive attack against Iran, and wanted to avoid regional escalation. Asked on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d whether Biden essentially told Netanyahu to \u201ctake the win,\u201d John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council said, \u201cI think the president was, again, very clear with Prime Minister Netanyahu about the success that they enjoyed last night and the impact that that success ought to have.\u201d<\/p>\n
While messages were exchanged indirectly between the United States and Iran through the government of Switzerland as the crisis built over the last 10 days, officials denied reports that the Iranians had given a 72-hour warning to Washington or countries in the region that the attack was about to start. \u201cThat is absolutely not true,\u201d the senior administration official said. \u201cThey did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of these are the targets. \u2026 They were clearly intending to destroy targets. \u2026 They just didn\u2019t succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Public saber-rattling from Iran that it would respond to the Israeli attack on its personnel in Damascus \u201cgave us time to prepare,\u201d and Iran also \u201cneeded time to prepare to do this,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
At one point during Saturday evening, \u201cwe received a message from the Iranians \u2026 through the Swiss, basically suggesting that they were finished. But it was still an ongoing attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirby was also asked whether Biden has ruled out the United States launching a direct attack on Iran. \u201cThe president has made it clear: We do not seek a war with Iran,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t seek a wider war in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, Biden met again with his senior defense and diplomatic officials in the Situation Room, reviewing the results that they deemed Israel\u2019s \u201cspectacular defeat\u201d of the attack.<\/p>\n
Biden also met virtually with the Group of Seven, with some discussions about additional sanctions on Iran. He also called Jordanian King Abdullah II, who has been a crucial ally amid the escalating tensions in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe, the Leaders of the G7, unequivocally condemn in the strongest terms Iran\u2019s direct and unprecedented attack against Israel. Iran fired hundreds of drones and missiles towards Israel,\u201d the group said in a statement on Sunday afternoon. \u201cIsrael, with the help of its partners, defeated the attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Republicans, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, criticized Biden for not being more forceful with Iran, or in backing any Israeli response.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I don\u2019t understand is why Joe Biden and the administration would leak to the media the contents of a conversation in which he tells Netanyahu he doesn\u2019t think [Israel] should respond at all,\u201d Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN. \u201cIt is the continuing part of this public game that they are playing, which frankly encourages Iran and Hezbollah, which we haven\u2019t even talked about, and the Houthis, and all these other elements, that are targeting Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on Sunday, Biden spoke with top House and Senate leaders from both parties, urging the House to pass a national security spending bill as soon as possible. The Senate in February passed a $95 billion package that included funding for Israel, as well as Ukraine and Taiwan, but a fractious House GOP hasn\u2019t taken it up. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Republicans would \u201ctry again this week\u201d to pass some sort of aid package for Israel, but what that package looks like \u2014 and whether it includes funding for Ukraine \u2014 is likely to be the subject of intense debate.<\/p>\n
Criticism of what Rubio and others describe as Biden\u2019s failure to confront Iran began with the administration\u2019s unsuccessful attempts to reinstate a nuclear deal with Tehran that President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. The agreement, which also included Russia, China, Britain France and Germany, along with the European Union, held Iran\u2019s development of a nuclear weapon in check in exchange for lifting sanctions.<\/p>\n
Six years later, the restraints have fallen away, one by one, leaving Iran closer to nuclear weapons capability than at any time in the country\u2019s history. With those advances, the risk of an escalation of conflict between Iran and nuclear-armed Israel has taken on a new level of threat.<\/p>\n
At the United Nations, where the Security Council on Sunday afternoon held the latest of dozens of meetings on the regional crisis \u2014 most of them focused on the Israel-Hamas war \u2014 some of the United States\u2019 harshest critics, including Russia and China, placed much of the blame for this weekend\u2019s confrontation on U.S. failure to condemn Israel\u2019s April 1 attack in Iran in Damascus.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani, told the council Tehran does not seek escalation and \u201chas no intention of engaging in conflict with the U.S.\u201d despite the U.S. role in intercepting Iranian drones and missiles. But Iran would not hesitate to act in self-defense in response to further \u201cmilitary provocation\u201d from Israel, and would respond \u201cproportionately\u201d if the United States initiates military operations against Iran or its security and interests, Iravani said.<\/p>\n
Michael Birnbaum, Alex Horton, Dan Lamothe, Daniel Wu and Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Biden administration on Sunday congratulated Israel \u2014 along with itself and allies \u2014 on their \u201cspectacular\u201d success in fending off an unprecedented barrage of more than 300 Iranian missiles and armed drones, even as it made clear its desire for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s coalition government to declare victory and refrain from striking back. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}