Amid rising tensions in the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden are believed to have talked about Israel’s response to Iran’s missile launch last week.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris participated in the 30-minute call on Wednesday, according to the White House.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared shortly after the call ended that his country will launch a “deadly, precise, and above all surprising” retaliation attack against Iran.
“They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results,” Gallant stated.
“Direct and very productive” was how White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterized the discussion between Biden and Netanyahu.
She informed reporters that talks over the Iran attack were still ongoing and that US flights for Americans residing in Lebanon would continue as long as Beirut’s main airport was operational.
There has been ongoing combat between Israel and Hezbollah in other parts of the Middle East. An Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese town close to Sidon, in the south, claimed four lives.
Hezbollah rockets fired from Lebanon killed a couple who were walking their dog in the small Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona.
These are the first civilian deaths in Israel in the past 12 days since the cross-border fighting sharply intensified.
Haifa, an Israeli port city, has also been hit by rockets, hurting at least five people.