MONITORING (SW) – US President Joe Biden has said that his administration has been “discussing” possible Israeli plans to attack Iran’s oil industry in retaliation for the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Tuesday.
Biden’s off-the-cuff remark did not make clear whether his administration was holding internal discussions or talking directly to Israel, nor did he clarify what his attitude was to such an attack, reported Guardian.
“First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” he told reporters outside the White House on Thursday. “And there is nothing going to happen today.”
US and Israeli officials have been talking about an appropriate Israeli response to an Iranian salvo of 181 ballistic missiles on Tuesday, most of which were intercepted though some landed on or around military bases. Satellite imagery published by the Associated Press on Thursday showed damage from four distinct impacts to buildings at Israel’s Nevatim airbase, one of the targets of the Iranian attack.
That attack was in turn a response to the Israeli killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike on Beirut on Friday, as what had started as a war in Gaza a year ago ignited in recent days into a major regional conflict.
Iran has informed Washington that a large-scale Israeli strike will lead in turn to Iranian attacks on Israeli infrastructure. Tehran also warned any other country assisting an Israeli attack would also make itself an Iranian target.
In a statement issued by Iran’s mission at the UN in New York, Iran said: “Should any country render assistance to the aggressor, it shall likewise be deemed an accomplice and a legitimate target.”
The warnings came as the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, sought assurances from Gulf leaders at a summit in Doha that they would remain neutral in the event of any joint Israeli-US attack in Iran.
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said: “We intend to close the book on disagreements with Iran forever and develop relations between us like two friends.”
His remarks underlined recent Saudi assurances that there will be no normalization agreement between Riyadh and Israel without Israel’s agreement to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Any Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities would raise global oil prices, potentially benefiting Gulf producers, but it could also affect their ability to export oil if the Israeli-Iran conflict led to the Persian Gulf being blocked.
In a joint press conference with Pezeshkian, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, said the crisis in the Middle East was a “collective genocide” and that his country had always warned of Israel’s “impunity”.
An Israeli airstrike in the early hours of Thursday morning, killed nine people when it hit a medical center belonging to the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organization, in the second bombing of central Beirut so far this week.
Israeli military said it had killed the Hezbollah commander, Khader Shahabiya, who was deemed responsible for the bombing in July that killed 12 children and teenagers playing on a football pitch in the Golan Heights. Dozens more were wounded in the same rocket attack.
