The United States had no advance warning of an Israeli strike in Beirut and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart as it was ongoing, a Pentagon spokesperson said on Friday.
They were the US government’s first comments about an Israeli operation that defied Washington’s calls for de-escalation and a ceasefire.
“The United States was not involved in this operation and we had no advanced warning,” spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
Singh declined to say what Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Austin about the operation and whether it targeted the Iran-backed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Pentagon declined to speculate on whether Nasrallah was still alive.
Austin and Gallant spoke as the Pentagon chief flew over the Atlantic after a visit to London.
The Biden administration has been seeking to contain the crisis from spiraling further. Austin has publicly warned that an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah would be devastating. On Thursday, he warned that risk existed but added a diplomatic solution was still viable.
“We now face the risk of an all-out war. Another full-scale war (could) be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” Austin told reporters on Thursday.
Asked what Austin may have communicated to Gallant given the Israeli strike’s potential impact on U.S. efforts to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Singh declined to offer specifics, but she said the defense secretary is always frank in his conversations with his Israeli counterpart.
“Look at just the engagements that the secretary and Minister Gallant have had over the last two weeks, speaking regularly. I think if there was any type of fracture in trust, you wouldn’t see those type of levels of calls and engagements occurring frequently,” Singh said when asked if the lack of advance notification by Israel indicated a lack of trust.
The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday in an attack that shook the Lebanese capital and sent thick clouds of smoke over the city.
The news outlet Axios cited an Israeli source as saying Nasrallah was the target of the strike and that the Israeli military was checking if he was hit.
A source close to Hezbollah told Reuters that Nasrallah was alive, while Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe. A senior Iranian security official told Reuters that Tehran was checking his status.
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