US President Joe Biden vowed on Wednesday that US support for Israel is “strong”, amid fears that the Middle Eastern nation will soon be attacked by Iran.
‘As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad. Let me say it again: battleship. “We are going to do everything we can to protect Israel’s security,” Biden said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Biden’s top diplomat, Anthony Blinken, confirmed his words, telling Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a phone call that the United States would back Israel if Iran decides to attack.
An attack by Iran or its proxies against military and government targets in Israel is imminent. Bloomberg News reported citing intelligence sources, with one source saying it’s more a question of when, not if, it will happen.
Tensions in the Middle East flared today after an Iranian news agency published a report on X saying that all airspace over Tehran had been closed for military exercises, before quickly deleting the post and denying it had ever broadcast the news .
But Iran has vowed to retaliate for an Israeli strike in Syria on April 1 that killed several top Iranian commanders when Israeli forces attacked the Iranian embassy building in Damascus.
US President Joe Biden (pictured) vowed on Wednesday that US support for Israel is ‘strong’
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured) vowed to take revenge on Israel for the attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
Rescuers search through the rubble of a building attached to the Iranian embassy a day after an airstrike in Damascus.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks at the coffins of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who were killed in the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel “must and will be punished” for the embassy attacks. In a speech on Wednesday to mark Eid al-Fitr, he noted that attacking an embassy “means that they have attacked our soil.”
“The evil regime made a mistake and must be punished and will be punished,” he added, according to IRNA, the state news agency.
Iran’s main proxy group is Hezbollah, which is based in southern Lebanon and has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces almost daily since war broke out in Gaza in October.
Israel has not explicitly acknowledged that it was behind that attack, but has put its military on alert.
And Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in X: “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will react and attack in Iran.”
There are fears that an open war between Israel and Iran could escalate into a much broader conflict, after Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in an apparent response to the Ayatollah’s promise of retaliation that Israel would respond if Iran attacks him from his own soil.
Emergency and security personnel search through rubble at the site of attacks that hit a building attached to the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on April 1, 2024.
Rescuers search through the rubble of a building attached to the Iranian embassy a day after an airstrike in Damascus on April 2, 2024.
Debris from a building attached to the Iranian embassy appears a day after an airstrike in Damascus on April 2, 2024.
Tagging Iran’s leader in a post made on X yesterday, he wrote: “If Iran attacks from its own territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran.”
Israel has already been fighting enemies in the north, announcing on Sunday that it had launched airstrikes in eastern Lebanon and attacked Hezbollah infrastructure sites after the Iran-backed group shot down an Israeli drone, as both sides continue to exchange fire. amid escalating regional tensions.
The Israeli military said in a statement that warplanes attacked a military complex and three other sites belonging to Hezbollah in the eastern city of Baalbek.
It said the attack was in response to Hezbollah’s downing of an unmanned aerial vehicle in Lebanese airspace, which the group identified as the Israeli-made Hermes 900 drone.
Hezbollah said it then fired dozens of Katyusha rockets that hit an air defense base in the occupied Golan Heights, in retaliation for Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon.
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the southern Lebanese city of Khiam on April 8, 2024.
A minibus left unusable after Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon
Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israel along Lebanon’s southern border since October 8, a day after Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza and led to an escalation of regional tensions. .
Israeli bombings have killed about 270 Hezbollah fighters and about 50 civilians, security sources say.
Some 90,000 people have also been displaced in southern Lebanon, while more than 96,000 Israelis have been displaced from the country’s northern border area, officials on both sides say.
The United States and other countries have sought a diplomatic solution to the exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel.
Hezbollah said it will not stop fire before a ceasefire is implemented in Gaza.