REPORT: Biden approved Iranian Attack on Israel
It has been revealed that Iranian officials communicated their intent to launch a massive attack against Israel with the intention that this message be conveyed to the United States. Through these same diplomatic channels, the US conveyed its tacit assent on the condition that any action it took had to be “within certain limits”.
On Sunday, Reuters cited a Turkish diplomatic source speaking on condition of anonymity as saying that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had spoken to both his US and Iranian counterparts in the past week to discuss the planned Iranian attack on Israel.
“Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and they (the US) conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits,” the Turkish source said.
“In response, Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this,” he added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian confirmed this on Sunday, saying that Iran gave neighboring countries and the United States 72 hours’ notice that it would launch the attack.
A senior official in the Biden administration denied that the White House was given advance notice.
“That is absolutely not true,” the official said to the media. “They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of … ‘these will be the targets, so evacuate them.’”
“We received a message from the Iranians through the Swiss as this [attack] was ongoing. This was basically suggesting that they were finished after this, but it was still an ongoing attack. So that was (their) message to us,” the U.S. official said. He suggested that the Iranians’ claim they had pre-warned the US of the attack was to compensate for the lack of any major damage from the attack.
In a televised speech on Friday when the attack was still imminent but unrealized, President Biden addressed the Iranian threat, saying he would not divulge secret information but expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later”. His one-word response to the possibility of Iran attacking Israeli civilian centers was to warn , “Don’t.”
On Sunday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the Biden administration “is proud to have played a critical role” in preventing the loss of life from the Iranian attack.
“The United States commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct,” Miller said. “Our contributions to Israel’s defense against Iran are a clear manifestation of that commitment.”
This “sacrosanct commitment did not include allowing Israel to respond to the attack. On Saturday, President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call that Washington would not support an Israeli retaliatory attack.
Despite the indications that the Biden administration had prior knowledge and given tacit permission for the attack, the White House blamed President Trump for Iranian aggression. On Sunday, White House national security communications spokesperson John Kirby gave an interview in which he blamed the previous administration for exiting the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran.
“It was the previous administration that decided to get us out of the Iran deal,” Kirby said. “And now Iran is so much dramatically closer to a potential nuclear weapon capability than they were before Mr. Trump was elected.”
It should be noted that since Biden took office, his administration has removed sanctions, accounting for an additional $32 billion to $35 billion in oil revenue for Iran. About 70% of Iran’s oil exports are to China. The administration also paid the Iranian government $6 billion in ransom in return for five hostages.
In 2020 the State Department assessed that Iran sends $100 million a year to Palestinian terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah. Last year Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that his group receives $70 million from Iran, plus long-range rockets but recent reports claim that this increased to $350 million in the last year.
On November 14, five weeks after the October 7 attack by Hamas, the Biden administration extended a sanctions waiver to allow Iran to access upwards of $10 billion in electricity revenue once held in escrow in Iraq.
While the Biden administration is removing sanctions on Iran, Democratic lawmakers are increasing calls to make US aid to Israel conditional. More than 50 Democrats in the House, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), signed a letter this month demanding an investigation into the inadvertent IDF drone attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy. The letter called to withhold aid at least until it’s completed.
The Iranian government claims the massive attack on Israel was in response to a missile attack on the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1. Sixteen people were killed in total, including seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldiers, five Iran-backed militia, one Hezbollah fighter, one Iranian advisor, and two civilians. Among those killed in the attack was Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi who was credited in Iranian media as being the “architect” of the October 7 attack by Hamas. Zahedi was also a member of Hezbollah’s Shura Council. Zahedi was the most senior IRGC officer to be killed since the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S. in January 2020.
As per its longstanding policy, the Israeli government did not comment or take credit for the attack. The attack was widely condemned by governments who claimed it illegally targeted a civilian structure. The Iranian government claimed the embassy located in Damascus was on Iranian soil. It is unclear why the Syrian diplomatic facility was populated exclusively by a large number of Iranian military personnel. The Israeli military spokesman claimed that the building is neither a consulate nor an embassy, but a military building of Quds forces “disguised as a civilian structure in Damascus.”
On Saturday night, Iran fired more than 300 weapons at Israel, including at least 170 aerial drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles. The attack constituted the largest drone attack in history, but the attack was considered a major failure. Most were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and with help from the U.S., Britain, France and Jordan. An estimated 50% of Iran’s 120 ballistic missiles failed to launch or crashed in flight, unnamed US officials told CBS News and The Wall Street Journal.
None of the drones or cruise missiles entered Israeli territory. Speaking to CBS News, two US officials said five ballistic missiles made it through air defenses and impacted Israeli territory.
The post REPORT: Biden approved Iranian Attack on Israel appeared first on Israel365 News.
Israel in the News
