by Chris Menahan, Information Liberation:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday declined to go on the record stating Israel will not strike Iranian nuclear and oil facilities as the US desires, insisting instead that the Jewish state will only “listen” to the “opinions” of America but “will make our final decisions based on our national interests.”
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From Bloomberg, “Israel Considers US Warnings in Calibrating New Iran Strikes”:
Israel said it’s weighing US misgivings over a planned counter-strike on Iran, after a report suggested the government is keeping nuclear and energy facilities off the target list to cap a potential escalation.
Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also asserted the country is free to act how it chooses after more than a year of battling Iranian proxy groups and fending off two direct long-range attacks from the Islamic Republic, whose regional clout and nuclear aspirations Netanyahu sees as an existential threat.
“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interests,” Netanyahu’s office said Tuesday.
Unfortunately, the “American” officials running the Biden administration feel the same way.
Israel and the US have been conferring regularly on how to retaliate for Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic-missile salvo, a dilemma that’s jangled nerves across the Middle East and in energy markets. The debate has tested the relationship between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, who has sought unsuccessfully to secure a truce in the country’s conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A report in the Washington Post said the Israeli premier had agreed to limit the response to military targets. The newspaper cited two officials familiar with the matter who it didn’t identify.
Israel has received initial components of a US-supplied and operated missile shield known as THAAD as well as an advance team of American military personnel, according to the Pentagon. That system would help defend against ballistic-missile attacks, although some Israeli analysts have said the deployment may also hinder Israel’s ability to act alone against Iran.
The THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense system “costs about $1 billion a battery and requires a crew of about 100 [US troops] to operate it,” the BBC reports.
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