Washington, DC – United States President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have held a “productive” 30-minute call, the White House says, amid an escalation of violence across the Middle East.
The call between the two leaders on Wednesday was their first publicly announced conversation since August.
“It was direct. It was productive,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said of the call. “They discussed a range of issues.”
The call was made as Israel considers an attack against Iran in response to Iranian ballistic missile launches that targeted Israeli military sites on October 1.
Jean-Pierre said Biden and Netanyahu had “discussions” about the confrontation with Iran without providing further details.
Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israeli bases last week in an assault that it said was in retaliation for the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah alongside an Iranian general in Beirut.
The US administration pledged to ensure “severe consequences” for Iran over the attack.
Asked after the missile attack whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Biden said: “The answer is no.”
The US president also suggested that Washington opposes bombing Iran’s oilfields.
“The Israelis have not concluded what they are going to do. That’s under discussion,” he told reporters on Friday.
“If I were in their shoes, I would be thinking about other alternatives than striking Iranian oilfields.”
Such an attack would send oil prices soaring across the world, which could prove costly for Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, who is running to succeed him in the US presidential election next month.
The US has provided unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel since the outbreak of the war on Gaza – a policy that Harris has promised to maintain.
While Washington has warned against expanding the war, the Biden administration says it backs the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced over one million others, as well as what the US ally has described as a “limited” ground offensive in the country.
But Netanyahu warned the Lebanese people on Tuesday that if they do not turn against Hezbollah, their country would face a “long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.
Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in the besieged Palestinian territory, where it has levelled entire residential areas and imposed severe restrictions on humanitarian aid, bringing the enclave to the verge of famine.
US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller warned that there “should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza”.
But parts of southern and eastern Lebanon and the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh are already seeing widespread destruction due to Israeli bombardments.
As the war expands in Lebanon, Israel has been pushing on with its campaign in Gaza, where Palestinian rights advocates are accusing it of carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in the north of the territory by withholding aid and shutting centres sheltering civilians.
On Wednesday, Miller expressed concern about possible abuses in Gaza.
“We have been making clear to the government of Israel that they have an obligation under international humanitarian law to allow food and water and other needed humanitarian assistance to make it into all parts of Gaza, and we fully expect them to comply with those obligations,” he said.
The US provides Israel at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has authorised $14bn in further assistance to help fund the ongoing war.