Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time in weeks 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 vice- president and presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, also joined the call, according to the White House.
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.
It is believed to be the first time Biden and Netanyahu have spoken in two months. Their 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 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 Donald 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.
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.
