The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.
National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was “conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned.”
The spokesperson described the attack as “horrific” and said the US is “working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line that will end all attacks once and for all, and allow citizens on both sides of the border to safely return to their homes”.
The statement added that US “support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah”.
The statement was issued as the Israeli government announced on Sunday that it was withdrawing David Barnea, Israel’s foreign intelligence chief, from ceasefire negotiations between Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US over the Israel-Gaza war.
The day-long talks in Rome were convened to negotiate an Israel-Hamas truce that would see the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Israel did not offer a reason for withdrawing its top negotiator.
The attack on Majdal Shams village has intensified fears that, without a ceasefire in Gaza, an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is drawing closer and could draw the US deeper into a regional conflict.
Senior US political figures on Sunday looked past the immediate responsibility for the attack to blame Iran for escalating regional unrest.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, emphasized Israel’s “right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that”.
But, he added that the US “also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.
“Iran, through its surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, is really the real evil in this area,” said Democrat Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.
“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah like they do against Hamas. It’s sort of – it shows you how bad Iran and its surrogates are,” Schumer added, saying that the Hezbollah attack had hit “Arab kids”.
“They don’t care – they sent missiles at and they don’t even care who that is. But having said that, I don’t think anyone wants a wider war. So I hope there are moves to de-escalate.”
Schumer, the most senior Jewish-American politician in Congress, was part of the controversial bipartisan invitation to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress last week, which led to accusations that US politicians had allowed the body to be used as a stage prop for Israel’s nine-month offensive in Gaza.
Schumer, however, did not shake Netanyahu’s hand. “I went to this speech, because the relationship between Israel and America is ironclad and I wanted to show that,” Schumer said, adding that he also has “serious disagreements” with the way the Israeli prime minister “has conducted these policies”.
The former house speaker Nancy Pelosi later tweeted that Netanyahu’s “presentation in the House chamber was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with that privilege in American history”.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Republican senator Lindsey Graham predicted that US and Lebanese efforts to cool tensions between Israel and Hezbollah would not be successful because “Iran is behind all of this” and warned of possible nuclear concerns.
Speaking with CBS’s Face the Nation, Graham blamed the Biden-Harris administration for “a colossal failure in terms of controlling the Ayatollah. They’ve enriched him and Israel is paying the price.”
Republican congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, which oversees all US foreign military sales and transfers, accused the Biden administration of intentionally delaying weapons shipments to Israel in order to have “leverage” over Israel’s decision-making processes.
McCaul said “daylight” between the US and Israel was “very dangerous, especially right now, for us to somehow put daylight between us and our most important US ally democracy in the Middle East.
“We don’t want escalation for sure,” he said, describing Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi rebels as “proxies of Iran”. He said Iran doesn’t want Saudi-Israel normalization, “so it’s not in their interest to have any cease-fire.”
