US says it is not participating in Israeli strikes against Iran

The United States is not participating in the Israeli military’s operations against Iran, a senior administration official said Friday.

Israel did give the White House a heads up in advance of the strikes, according to a source familiar with the notification.

President Joe Biden is currently in Wilmington, Delaware, and his advisers are currently not planning to convene in the Situation Room.

The Israeli Defense Forces, announcing the moves on X, described the action as “precise strikes on military targets” in Iran, though it remained unclear which specific sites were targeted.

Some background: In recent weeks, top US officials made clear their views that Israel’s response — both in character and the sites targeted — should avoid being unduly escalatory or impacting the global economy, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

Biden and his top national security advisers, in a series of regular discussions, made clear they did not support strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil reserves. While officials believed that other oil producers could easily make up the roughly 1 million barrels per day that Iran produces, they worried more about the market’s interpretation of such a strike and the possibility of a surge in energy prices around the world as US voters went to the polls.

“The psychology is more substantive than the reality,” the source tells CNN, pointing to the mere suggestion of a strike on oil facilities sending market prices up by more than 4%.

CNN has reported that Israeli officials provided assurances to the US that the response target military assets — not nuclear or oil sites — after the Biden administration raised concerns about further provocation and ramifications at home.

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