Jerusalem: Israel said it’s weighing the Biden administration’s misgivings over its planned counter-strike on Iran, after a report suggesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may spare Tehran’s nuclear and energy facilities to limit potential escalation.
The Jewish state, though, also asserted it’s free to act how it sees fit after more than a year of battling Iranian proxy groups on its borders and fending off two direct long-range attacks from the Islamic republic, whose regional clout and nuclear aspirations Netanyahu casts as an existential threat.
“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interests,” Netanyahu’s office said Tuesday in a statement.
A report in the Washington Post said the Israeli premier had agreed to limit his retaliation for an October 1 Iranian ballistic missile salvo to military targets. It cited two officials familiar with the matter whom it didn’t identify.
Oil prices continue to drop
Israel’s prospective counter-strike is jangling nerves across the Middle East and has further strained ties with US President Joe Biden, who has sought unsuccessfully to secure a truce in the country’s conflicts with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both organisations are designated terrorist groups by the US.
A major escalation may engulf the broader region in conflict and have implications for the outcome of the US presidential elections on November 5.
Oil prices continued to drop Tuesday with West Texas Intermediate futures falling 3.8% to $71.05 a barrel after it lost 2.3% the day before.
Israel and the US have been conferring regularly on Iran strategy. An Israeli official said the country expects on Tuesday to receive the first elements of a US-supplied and operated missile shield known as THAAD. That system would help defend against ballistic missile attacks, although some Israeli analysts have said the deployment, along with about 100 US troops, might also hinder Israel’s ability to act alone against Iran.
Hezbollah keeps up attacks
At the same time, Israeli tanks and troops are continuing their incursion into southern Lebanon in an attempt to root out Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, while the air force pummels the country’s interior.
On Monday, Lebanese authorities said a bombing killed 21 people in a remote region with a Christian-majority population, well away from the Hezbollah heartland.
Israel said it struck Hezbollah and that it was assessing reports of civilian casualties.
Hezbollah, which killed four soldiers at an Israeli rear base with a drone strike on Sunday, is keeping up its attacks. On Tuesday, sirens sounded in and around the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, sending hundreds of thousands of people running to shelters. The Israeli military said two projectiles launched from Lebanon were shot down.
Iran’s diplomatic efforts
While Israel has overrun Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, it has staged new army incursions and airstrikes in what it says is an attempt to stop the Islamist militants regrouping.
An attack near a hospital on Monday killed four people, the Palestinian health ministry said. Videos from the scene showed tents and at least one body in flames. Israel said the target was a Hamas command center.
Iran’s foreign minister, meanwhile, has toured regional countries over the past week to urge “a common understanding” on the crisis, according to a statement. Abbas Araghchi visited counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Oman, as well as meeting with a official from the Yemen-based Houthis and holding a call with China’s Foreign Ministry.
Iran has repeatedly called on Gulf Arab states to cut ties with Israel over the war in Gaza.
The head of the country’s Quds Force, the branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for foreign operations, made his first public appearance in weeks early Tuesday. It followed reports he was in Beirut during an Israeli air strike last month.
Esmail Qaani was attending a ceremony in Tehran to receive the body of an IRGC official who was killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the Lebanese capital in September.
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