Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told US President Joe Biden that he intends to strike only military targets in Iran when Israel retaliates for the latest missile barrage Tehran fired on the Jewish state, The Washington Post has claimed.
The message was delivered during a phone call between the two leaders on Wednesday last week, the first such conversation in several weeks, the newspaper said on Monday. Details about the top-level conversation were provided by two anonymous sources: a US official and an “official familiar with the matter,” who described the Israeli position.
Iran fired over 180 missiles at Israel on October 1, stating that it was a reprisal for Israeli assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, who was killed by a bomb in Tehran in late July, and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in late September. The Netanyahu government said it would choose how to respond.
Biden has publicly urged Netanyahu to refrain from striking oil or nuclear infrastructure in Iran. Washington reportedly offered Israel a “compensation package” in exchange for its agreement to the request.
According to Post sources, Netanyahu was in a “more moderated place” during the call with Biden, which prompted the US leader to authorize the deployment to Israel of a THAAD anti-ballistic missile system and about 100 associated US military personnel. The Pentagon announced the move on Sunday.
The official familiar with the matter said Israel intended to launch a series of attacks on Iran and that the first of them would come before the November 5 presidential election in the US. But the strike would be calibrated in a way that Israel hopes will prevent it from being taken as an attempt to influence the outcome of the vote.
Netanyahu discussed the situation with his security cabinet on Thursday night, but did not seek their approval to keep the timing open-ended, the source added.
West Jerusalem has a vested interest in opposing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University who is in contact with senior members of Israel’s defense establishment, told the newspaper.
The recent election of reformist Masoud Pezeshkian as the new president of Iran has alarmed Netanyahu’s team, she said. Pezeshkian could negotiate the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal with Harris if she succeeds Biden, and the Israeli prime minister believes that “now is a strategic moment to undermine this,” the Israeli analyst explained.