US will not support Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites – Joe Biden

Joe Biden has said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites, as the US sought to temper Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday and contain a rapidly escalating regional conflict.

Biden’s comments came after the top Israeli diplomat at the UN warned his country’s retaliation for an Iranian salvo of nearly 200 ballistic missiles would be heavier than Tehran “could ever have imagined”.

On the same day, the Israeli chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, warned: “We have the capabilities to reach and strike any point in the Middle East”, a reality that Israel’s enemies would “soon understand”

Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting of his top security officials at the Israeli defence headquarters, the Kirya in Tel Aviv, on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the country’s options after a round of conversations with Washington.

As Israel contemplated opening a fourth front with its regional enemies, eight Israeli soldiers were confirmed killed and a significant number wounded in three clashes with Hezbollah, following Israel’s first significant ground incursions across the Lebanese border since 2006.

Late on Wednesday, powerful explosions were again heard in southern and central Beirut, as Lebanese authorities said that 46 people had been killed and 85 injured in Israeli attacks on the city in the previous 24 hours.

A separate strike on the Syria capital Damascus reportedly killed the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah – the Hezbollah leader who died last week in a massive Israeli strike in Beirut.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Hassan Jaafar Qasir was among three people killed by the attack, which flattened a building in the Mazzeh district, an area favoured by Hezbollah militants and officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Guardian

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