WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden held a “direct,” 30-minute phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, their first conversation in almost two months and a chance to confer over Israel’s planned response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
“They discussed a range of issues”, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the call ended, characterising the conversation as an extension of discussions between US and Israeli officials about Israel’s response to the Iranian attack, which Biden has said should be “proportional.”
A White House readout described Biden condemning “unequivocally” the Iranian missile attack, without expanding any further on the two leaders’ discussion of Israel’s response, which was the reason for the call and which Biden has said should not include an attack on Iranian nuclear sites.
That the two leaders went 49 days without speaking amid rapidly escalating tensions in the Middle East was a sign of how fraught the relationship has become, and how distant the two leaders have become in their objectives for the region.
The US is working to get Americans out of Lebanon ahead of a potential Israeli attack, White House press spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday. The US embassy in Beirut remains open and can help Americans who need emergency passports or other documentation and the US will continue to make airplanes available as long as the Beirut airport remains open, Jean-Pierre said.
The Israeli military, however, said it has no plans to scale back its current attacks in Lebanon, with the IDF touting Wednesday that it has conducted more than 1,100 airstrikes across the border in recent weeks. More than 1,110 Americans have fled Lebanon so far as the battles between Israel and Hezbollah continue to intensify, officials said.
The US is organising thousands of seats to be made available for American citizens to depart the country, with 50 people boarding the latest flight to Istanbul Wednesday morning, US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
“We’ve had some flights go out with around 150 people, and we’ve had these other flights with fewer, but it is going to be an ongoing question we look at, an ongoing assessment that we make,” Miller said of the trips being scheduled for Americans.
Miller said the flights will carry on as needed as hundreds of other foreign nationals are also choosing to evacuate Lebanon to escape the bloody conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Hundreds of thousands have already fled southern Lebanon, where Israel’s bombardments are most intense and where the IDF is conducting ground operations to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons cache.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Israel will continue its harsh wave of attacks against Lebanon so as to “not allow (Hezbollah) any respite or recovery,” the Times of Israel reported. “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all, surprising”, Halevi said. “They will not understand what happened and how it happened”.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired at least 90 missiles over the border on Wednesday, with the rockets either intercepted or crashing and burning in northern Israeli fields, according to the IDF. (ANI)