Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. President Joe Biden that an Israeli retaliatory attack on Iran would target only military targets, and not oil or nuclear facilities, according to U.S. officials.
The officials were cited by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, which both reported late Monday that Netanyahu made the pledge during a phone call between the leaders last week.
A White House statement about the call made no mention of Israel’s plans, only that Biden reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel’s security and condemned an Iranian missile attack against Israel.
The Iranian attack came in response to Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, and amid a surge in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel has pledged to respond against Iran, while the United States has announced the deployment of an air defense missile system and U.S. troops to operate it to protect Israel.
The Israeli military said Tuesday air sirens were activated in the Haifa region, while Israeli air defenses intercepted several launches that crossed into Israel from Lebanon.
The Israel Defense Forces also reported Tuesday killing dozens of militants in airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu vowed Monday that Israel “will continue to strike Hezbollah without compassion in every part of Lebanon, including in Beirut.”
At least 21 people were killed Monday in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon, far from Hezbollah militant strongholds in the south and east of the country, the Lebanese Red Cross reported.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, and it was not clear what the target was. The attack hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito.
Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel over the past year, killing more than 60 people, but most of the missiles have been intercepted or hit in open areas and causing few casualties.
Israeli strikes during the past year have killed more 2,300 people in Lebanon, with more than three-quarters of the deaths coming in the past month, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Even as attention has shifted to Lebanon, Israel is still battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip more than a year after the October 2023 attack into southern Israel triggered the war there and set off escalations across the region. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies, and both are backed by Iran.
The Hamas attack a year ago killed 1,200 people in Israel and led to the capture of about 250 hostages. Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, with more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.
With the Gaza fighting now in its 13th month, Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of the territory along the Mediterranean Sea, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south. Israel has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of October.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas have been designated as terror groups by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and others.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
