Biden leads condemnation of Iran’s missile strikes on Israel

• Published date: 15 April 2024
• Author: KEITH DUGGAN
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting yesterday, the Group of Seven (G7) asserted that Iran’s strike risked “provoking an uncontrollable regional escalation” while, in a phone conference with Israel prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening, Mr Biden reportedly urged his counterpart to interpret the successful repulsion of the aerial barrage by an Israeli-US military coalition as “a win”

He also told Mr Netanyahu that he could be assured of America’s “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel” as the White House sought to portray the outcome of Iran’s aggression as a validation of the robustness of Israel’s military capacity. Iranian military fired more than 300 weapons, including 30 cruise and over 120 ballistic missiles. According to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), 99 per cent of these were taken down by a combination of Israeli and US missile defence destroyers.

Speaking yesterday, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz also praised Israel as “an anchor of security in the Middle East” and thanked the commanders and fighters of the IDF before vowing that Israel would “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran in a way and at a time that suits us”.

The Iranian strike was interpreted as a retaliation to the Israeli aircraft bombing of an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, on April 1st, which killed several military officials, including one member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The nature of Saturday’s attack – large in scale but telegraphed and led with slow drones – has fuelled some...