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 and urgently returned
to the White House
to monitor the situation with his top national security advisors.
Tension was high among US senior commanders, but they were eagerly waiting to see what the real scope of the Iranian offensive would be in retaliation for the Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus that killed a commander of the Persian regime.
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.
But the White House hoped that the counteroffensive would not be too large to drag the United States - and its partners - into a larger conflict in which it does not want to get involved.
Through diplomatic channels from third countries, the Biden government had warned Iran about the dangers of strong retaliation. Iranian sources told Reuters that Tehran had replied that it would respond to Israel's attack on the Syrian headquarters in a way that avoids a major escalation and that it would not act hastily as Tehran also pushes for a truce in Gaza.
In the White House they noted that Iran
let
the launch of its drones be revealed
with a lead-in window
of several hours that gave time for the defense shield to be activated and the damage in Israel to be minimized.
Also in Washington they took into account the message from the Iranian mission to the United Nations after the launch, which indicated that it would be limited: "Carried out on the basis of Article 51 of the UN Charter, relating to self-defense, action Iran's military action was in response to the Zionist regime's aggression against our diplomatic facilities in Damascus. The matter can be closed," the mission tweeted. And he warned: "If the Israeli regime makes another mistake, Iran's response will be considerably more severe. This is a conflict between Iran and the defiant regime in Israel, from which the US MUST STAY AWAY!"
Israel had not previously informed the US government about the attack that its army launched against the Iranian consulate in Damascus and that was a cause of friction between Biden and Netanyahu. 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.
Although Israel is a historical ally of the United States, Biden does not want to get involved in a major conflict and even
less so to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
, with whom he has had strong clashes. And, furthermore, 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.
Biden had been monitoring the situation with his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. But after it became known that Iran had launched the drone offensive, the president decided to return from his beach residence in Rehoboth to Washington on Saturday afternoon.
The president sat directly in the "situation room", the room where senior security officials meet when there is an emergency situation, to "discuss the situation in the Middle East," the government said in a statement.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived there; Secretary of State Antony Blinken; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown; CIA Director Bill Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and other officials. Vice President Kamala Harris and Chief of Staff Jeff Zients attended via video.
After the meeting, the US president shared a message in which
he reaffirmed his "strong commitment"
to "Israel's security against threats from Iran and its proxies."
Biden and Netanyahu had a very harsh phone call days ago in which the head of the White House imposed conditions on him to continue with the historic support for Israel if the prime minister did not take certain concrete steps to protect civilians and volunteers in Gaza and told him that he was “outraged” by the attack on 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Strip.
The premier opened a passage in the north and took some measures to expand the income of food. But it is still not enough for Biden, who does not want additional surprises that further complicate the explosive regional panorama.