Hours after Iranian missiles rained down on Israel on October 1, President Joe Biden’s administration sent an urgent message to Israel: Take a breath.
Washington argued that Israel owned the clock and had time to decide how best to respond to an Iranian attack, which the United States assessed would happen if Israel, with American military support. , had not been able to defeat his attack, thousands of people could have died. Long time enemy.
Officials feared that such a large Iranian attack had the potential to trigger a swift, intense Israeli response that could push the Middle East closer to an all-out regional confrontation, just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.
This account from current and former US officials outlines how the United States tried to influence Israel over the course of more than three weeks, before its military responded on Saturday with airstrikes that hit Washington. were more in line with military objectives than initially feared.
They destroyed key Iranian air defenses and missile production facilities, weakening Iran’s military. But, importantly, they avoided Iran’s sensitive nuclear sites and energy infrastructure, meeting Biden’s two top demands.
“The American pressure was extremely significant,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer for the Middle East.
“Israel’s decision-making would have been very different if the Biden administration had not taken measures to pressure Israel not to attack nuclear or energy sites.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied that Israel has refrained from attacking Iranian gas and oil facilities because of US pressure.
“Israel chose attack targets in advance in accordance with its national interests, not in accordance with US instructions,” he said.
Officials say the first step by Biden’s administration was to acknowledge that Iran will pay for the October 1 attack.
According to a senior Biden administration official, “Within hours of that attack, we had promised serious consequences for Iran.”
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held about a dozen calls with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Galant since October 1. Austin, a retired four-star Army general, and Gallant will discuss a possible response.
“We knew he was getting ready to do something and he was insistent on making it proportionate,” a U.S. official said of Austin’s conversation with Gallant.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, like other senior administration officials, spoke by phone with European and Arab allies in the days after Iran’s October 1 attack, explaining that Israel would have to respond but assuring them that Washington Was working to calibrate it.
But what would be a proportionate response that could prevent another Iranian attack?
Although Iran’s October 1 attack resulted in only one death, a Palestinian who died from falling debris, several of Iran’s missiles were not intercepted by Israeli or US air defenses.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said analysis of satellite imagery showed at least 30 impacts on Israel’s Nevatim air base alone.
This suggests Israel was either trying to preserve declining air defenses or simply thought it would be less expensive to repair the hardened facility than to repel every projectile fired by Iran, Lewis said.
Lewis said, “Israel may have decided that stockpiles were running low or were too expensive to use on interceptor ballistic missiles.”
air defense
A US official said that when the administration first began talking with the Israelis, among their possible targets were Iran’s nuclear sites and oil sites, although stressed that Israel would certainly not have agreed with these targets. Have not decided to proceed further.
But U.S. officials worked to offer an alternative option that included a set of different measures: Washington worked to impose oil sanctions targeting Iran’s so-called “ghost fleet” to offer the Israelis an alternative measure. who wanted to quickly harm Iran’s oil revenues. strike.
The senior Biden administration official said the United States worked to strengthen Israel’s air defenses ahead of Saturday’s attack on Iran. This includes a rare US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to Israel, along with about 100 US troops to operate it.
Before deploying the system, the United States wanted to know Israel’s attack plans.
Officials said Biden held a call with Netanyahu on October 9 to give the United States a sense of what Israel’s response would be, allowing the THAAD deployment to proceed.
As Iran warned that Israel’s supporters could be targeted in response to any Israeli attack, the Gulf countries stressed their neutrality.
Saudi Arabia is wary of an Iranian attack on its oil facilities as more than 5% of global oil supply was shut down after an attack on its key refinery in Abqaiq in 2019. Iran denied involvement.
To address Israel’s desire to punish Iran’s oil sector, the Biden administration imposed sanctions. This included the extension of US sanctions against Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors on October 11.
Encouraging European allies to impose penalties on Iran Air, as well as deploying the THAAD system as a deterrent and showing the world that the US has support for Israel, are other key elements of this “package” of alternative measures. Were.
And this option, the administration argued, would still be a powerful deterrent and effective in imposing costs on Iran without drawing the region into a broader war, something Washington believes Israel does not want, officials said.
nuclear prohibition
In what many experts saw as a message to Iran, the US military also launched strikes against Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen with long-range B-2 stealth bombers.
Austin said at the time that the attack was a unique demonstration of the Pentagon’s ability to attack inaccessible facilities, “no matter how deep underground, hardened or fortified.”
As speculation mounted over whether Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites, Washington’s message to Israel was that Tehran could count on its help if it ever chose to build nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence. The community doesn’t believe he did it yet.
There was no time yet.
Panikoff said, “The implication was that if in the long term they wanted American help to destroy such targets – if the decision was made to do so – they would have to be more measured this time.”
For Blinken, a calibrated Israeli retaliatory strike against Iran would be a chance for long-elusive diplomatic goals in a region already torn by the year-old war in Gaza between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas and the escalating war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah. Can open. Another Iranian ally.
During a trip to the Middle East last week, Blinken told Arab foreign ministers that US discussions with Israel had reached the point where Israel would only attack military targets. In return, should Iran do nothing else, Blinken said in a message, he hopes it will make its way to Tehran.
On Sunday, as the dust settled on the attack, neither side indicated any further progress. Netanyahu said their airstrikes dealt a “hard blow” to Iran’s security and missile production. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the damage caused by Saturday’s attack should not be exaggerated.
While it is impossible to predict whether Israel and Iran will ease tensions, US officials say the Biden administration worked hard to create an opportunity to break the unprecedented cycle of direct attacks and counter-attacks that began in April.
The senior Biden administration official said, “If Iran wishes to respond once again, we will be prepared, and there will once again be consequences for Iran. However, we do not want to see that happen.”
Biden’s strategy of trying to rein in Israel has critics, including opposition Republicans in the United States such as Mike Turner, a Republican congressman who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“They have limited Israel’s ability to really exert influence on Iran and its ability to continue to threaten Israel,” Turner told Fox News.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the result of the back-and-forth attacks, although paradoxically, is a potential expansion of risk tolerance in Israel that could become even wider after the Republican nominee and former U.S. president. Is. Donald Trump won the presidential election held on November 5.
“If Trump wins this election, I think the Israelis will probably look for opportunities in the coming months, now that they have demonstrated that they can get away with destroying Iran’s air defense systems and essentially doing good damage ” Miller said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
