White House’s Kirby says US would defend Israel in Iranian attack
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby stated that the United States is ready for an Iranian operation to avenge the Israeli assassination of Hamas’ chief politburo martyr Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran a month ago.
Speaking to Israeli Channel 12, Kirby commented that Washington does not dismiss Iran’s rhetoric regarding the attack on the tanker, but it is hard to gauge the likelihood of retaliation operations being conducted. We believe that [Iran is] still postured and poised to launch an attack should they want to do that, which is why we have that enhanced force posture in the region,” he said in an interview with the news outlet.
After the assassination of Haniyeh during his official visit to Tehran, Washington did not condemn the act, or express disapproval at the infringement of the sovereignty and security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Kirby said without mentioning the Israeli aggression: “Our message to Iran remains the same, has been the same, and will continue to be the same: one, don’t do it.” “I see no end in starting some kind of an all out regional war And number two, we will be ready to defend the state of Israel if it comes to that,” he said.
Recently, the United States has stepped up deployments to the region in an effort to discourage new mass attacks by Iran or its proxies, transferring the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike force to the region in order to replace the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike force.
Hezbollah waged on Sunday what it described as its ‘first reprisal’ following the recent assassination by Israel of its major military commander, Sayyed Fouad Shokor, in Beirut. The Israeli airstrikes on a residential building also resulted in the martyrdom of five civilians: three women and two children, beside tens of wounded.
Reacting to Hezbollah operations, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview with Reuters on Monday that the Resistance’s operation is “one of two major threatened attacks on Israel”.
As we already established it did not cause any direct threats of escalation which is evident that when it comes to the second one, as General Charles Q. Brown Brown put it, “depends how the second one is going to play out.”
However, the top general agreed that the probability of a regional war has “somewhat” reduced, but in the same breath, he warned that the planned Iranian operation to annihilate will define the destiny of the region.
Depending on how Iran is going to react we will see how Israel is going to react and based on that we might find ourselves in a situation where there is a full scale war.
