Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu are scheduled to speak on Wednesday, a call believed to be crucial amid expectations of an Israeli attack on Iran and a growing escalation of the year-old Middle East conflict.
The US news outlet Axios reported late on Tuesday that the US president and Israeli prime minister would discuss Israel’s response to last week’s unprecedented missile attack from Iran, launched in support of its ally Hezbollah after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. They are expected to talk in the late afternoon Israeli time, and morning time on the US east coast.
The timing and scope of the Israeli retaliation is still unclear, and a miscalculation could propel the two countries into a full-scale war, which neither side says it wants. The US, Israel’s staunch ally, is wary of being drawn into the fighting, as well as oil price shocks.
The Biden administration is keen to weigh in on Israel’s plans and avoid surprises such as the Israeli killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, although the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had so far refused to share details. Biden said last week that he would not support strikes on Iranian oil or nuclear sites.
It is believed that Biden and Netanyahu have not spoken in two months. The pair’s relationship has deteriorated since the spring over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. Biden allegedly shouted and swore at Netanyahu in July over Israel’s failure to give Washington advance warning of another strike on a senior Hezbollah leader, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
There still appear to be disagreements within Israel’s security cabinet over an appropriate response to Iran’s firing of 180 ballistic missiles, an attack that was mostly intercepted by air defence systems but killed one person in the occupied West Bank and hit some Israeli military sites.
Netanyahu promised that Iran would pay for the attack, while Tehran has repeatedly warned that an Israeli attack on its soil would be met with further escalation.
Israel is fearful of a costly war of attrition with Iran while it is fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. After Tehran fired its first ever direct salvo at Israel in April in retaliation for the killing of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander in Syria, Israel heeded western calls for restraint, striking an air defence battery at an Iranian airbase.
Israel’s response this time is expected to be more severe, but its timing remains unclear. Axios reported that the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, postponed a scheduled visit to Washington on Wednesday at Netanyahu’s insistence. The prime minister first wanted the attack plans voted on by the cabinet and to speak to Biden himself before Gallant holds discussions with Pentagon officials, the report said.
In Lebanon on Wednesday, eight days into Israel’s ground invasion, clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces appeared to be spreading across the mountainous border area.
The militant group said it had pushed back Israeli troops near Labbouneh, close to the Mediterranean coast, and attacked units with rocket fire in the villages of Maroun el-Ras, Mays al-Jabal and Mouhaybib.
Four people were killed and ten wounded by an Israeli airstrike in Wardanieh, near the coastal town of Sidon.
Heavy fire from Lebanon triggered rocket sirens and air defence interceptions across northern Israel on Wednesday, killing two people in the border town of Kiryat Shmona and wounding six in the major city of Haifa.
A quarter of Lebanon is now under Israeli evacuation orders, which have driven 1.2 million people from their homes. At least 1,400 have been killed in the last three weeks.
Many Lebanese people fear that Israel’s intense bombings and use of widespread evacuation orders mean the country faces a similar fate to Gaza, where 42,000 people have been killed in a year of fighting. The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October rampage in southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.