Iran has not yet received serious assurances from the Biden administration that Israel’s retaliation to an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1 would be limited and would exclude the capital, Tehran, or oil and nuclear facilities, US and other regional sources affirmed.
Iran’s government is extremely nervous and has been engaging in urgent diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East to gauge whether they can reduce the scale of Israel’s response to its missile attack earlier this month and – if that fails – help protect Tehran, US reports quoting officials said.
Israel’s “Machinations”
Iran’s anxiety stems from uncertainty about whether the US can convince Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites and oil facilities, and the fact that its most important proxy militia in the region, Hezbollah, has been significantly weakened by Israeli military operations in recent weeks, sources told CNN on Saturday.
The administration of US President Joe Biden keeps affirming that it is consulting with Israel on how it plans to respond to Iran’s October 1 attack.
US officials have made clear they do not want Israel to target Iranian nuclear sites or oil fields.
US President Joe Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Wednesday, and asked that Israel’s retaliation should be “proportional.”
However, a senior administration official said he can’t “put too much stock in the machinations” of the Israeli government.
Also, the Biden administration is deeply worried that the ongoing tit-for-tat attacks between Iran and Israel, which began earlier this year after Israel struck what Iran said was its consulate building in Damascus, could spiral into a major regional war that pulls the US in, too.
A major part of the fears is that the Israeli government is ignoring the US warnings and is not informing the administration about its dark plans.
Gap Between US and Israel Could Expand
Israel also did not consult with the US before conducting a massive attack that exploded thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives last month, or before assassinating Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and upending a delicate ceasefire proposal that had been put forward by the US and France less than 48 hours earlier.
While Israel has been very ambiguous about the timing and date of its response to Iran, CNN quoted an Israeli official as saying that Israel’s security cabinet has not yet reached a decision on how to proceed.
In return, US officials said while the gap between the US and Israeli positions is narrowing, it may not remain that way. “We can’t actually know whether they voted or not,” a senior administration official said of the Israeli cabinet’s discussions.
CNN reported that as of last week, Israel had not given any assurances that it would not target Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is planning to visit Washington next Tuesday to discuss his country’s response to the Iranian attack.
This week, Gallant had issued a strong warning to Iran saying, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
Iran Looking for Way Out
An Arab diplomat told CNN that Iran has been particularly interested in getting help from Middle East countries in preventing an Israeli attack and using their influence with Washington to help find a solution to the crisis.
The US does not believe that Iran wants to become entangled in a full-scale war with Israel.
But a US official said that ultimately “we just do not know what [Iran] will do.”
Key voices within Iran will have different ideas about if and how to respond to Israel, but that will depend on the scale and scope of the highly anticipated Israeli move, another US official said.
Diplomatic sources told Asharq Al-Awsat on Friday that Iran has sent a message to Israel through European channels about its possible response to any attack that comes from Israel,
The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Iranian message sent indirectly to Israel says that Iran would “shrug off a limited Israeli strike.”
Yet Tehran warned that “it would have no choice but to cross the red line” if its oil or nuclear facilities come under attack.
