The president of the United States, Joe Biden, interrupted his rest at his beach house this Saturday due to the announcement of the Iranian attack on Israel. Biden had already said that the response against Israel would come, "sooner rather than later" and this Saturday he said that he will "support" Israel.
The White House hoped that the counteroffensive would not be too large to drag the U.S. into a larger conflict in which it does not want to get involved. An extended war would become an internal problem for the president, when he is in the midst of an electoral campaign for re-election against Donald Trump and his handling of the Middle East issue is already having a negative impact on the Democrat's polls. The United States assured Iran that it had nothing to do with that offensive, but also warned it not to use that attack as a pretext to further escalate in the region. Israel had not previously informed the US government about the attack that its army launched against the Iranian consulate in Damascus and was a cause of friction between Biden and Netanyahu.