Biden and
Netanyahu speak as Gallant warns of ‘deadly’ surprise attack on Iran
Leaders talk
for first time in weeks as US administration seeks to weigh in on Israel’s
plans
Bethan
McKernan in Jerusalem and Julian Borger in London
Wed 9 Oct
2024 13.56 EDT
Joe Biden
and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time in weeks on Wednesday amid
expectations of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran, which Yoav Gallant warned
would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.
Netanyahu’s
defence minister issued the warning in a video message on Israeli media on
Wednesday night, broadcast after he postponed a scheduled trip to Washington.
Gallant said
that the Iranian missile attack on Israel on 1 October had been a failure but
would be avenged.
“Whoever
attacks us will be hurt and will pay a price. Our attack will be deadly,
precise and above all surprising, they will not understand what happened and
how it happened, they will see the results,” the Israeli defence minister said.
Gallant’s
video message was broadcast a few hours after the conversation between
Netanyahu and Biden, their first in seven weeks, which was joined by the
vice-president, Kamala Harris, whose presidential campaign could be upset by
the widening hostilities in the Middle East and any consequent spike in oil
prices. It also emerged on Wednesday that Netanyahu last week spoke with
Harris’s opponent, Donald Trump.
A White
House readout of the call did not directly mention possible retaliation for the
Iranian missile strike but said Biden had condemned Tehran’s attack
“unequivocally” and pledged “ironclad” support for Israel.
Biden and
Netanyahu “agreed to remain in close contact over the coming days, both
directly and through their national security teams,” the readout said.
The timing
and scope of the Israeli retaliation is still unclear, and a miscalculation
could propel Iran and Israel 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,
and of oil price shocks.
The Biden
administration is keen to weigh in on Israel’s plans and avoid surprises like
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.
Netanyahu’s
relationship with Biden has deteriorated significantly since the spring over
Israel’s 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 the journalist Bob
Woodward.
In War, a
book out next week, Woodward reports that Biden regularly accused Netanyahu of
having no strategy, and shouted: “Bibi, what the fuck?” at him in July, after
Israeli strikes near Beirut and in Iran.
Netanyahu’s
office also confirmed that the prime minister had recently spoken with the
former president Trump. The Republican, who is in a close White House race
against Harris, called Netanyahu last week and “congratulated him on the
intense and determined operations that Israel carried out against Hezbollah”,
according to Netanyahu’s office.
“World
leaders want to speak and meet with President Trump because they know he will
soon be returning to the White House and will restore peace around the globe,”
a Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement about that call, which a
Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, also joined.
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 wanted the cabinet to vote on the attack plans
first and to speak to Biden himself before Gallant held 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 10 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.
During their
call Biden emphasised to Netanyahu the “need to minimise harm to civilians, in
particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut”.
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.
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