World Leaders Urge Restraint as Israel Weighs Retaliation Against Iran
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photograph: anadolu via getty images
World Leaders Urge Restraint as Israel Weighs Retaliation Against Iran
NY Times-April 15th2024
Israel’s war cabinet was meeting again on Monday as it faced growing international pressure not to retaliate against Iran for its missile and drone attack over the weekend, even as some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government called for an aggressive response.
Mr. Netanyahu faces a delicate calculation: how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while trying to avoid alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. While the United States, Britain and France strongly condemned Iran’s assault and stepped in to help thwart it, their calls for restraint highlighted the intense pressure Israel was facing to avoid fueling a wider Middle East conflict.
The Iranian attack, though unprecedented, produced little damage, and life in Israel was returning to normal. Iranian officials signaled on Sunday that they were seeking to prevent further escalation.
Here’s what we know:
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Mr. Netanyahu’s war cabinet met on Sunday evening without deciding how to respond to Iran’s assault, and the military had yet to detail possible options by nightfall, an official who was briefed on the meeting said. Israel has faced calls for restraint from the United States, the Group of 7 nations, the European Union and the secretary general of the United Nations.
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Israel’s next moves will have strategic implications for its war in Gaza against the armed group Hamas, which is funded and armed by Iran, and for Palestinian civilians who have been struggling for months with violence and severe hunger. Witnesses said that Israeli troops fired at a crowd in northern Gaza on Sunday.
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Nearly all of the drones and missiles that Iran fired at Israel on Saturday — in retaliation for a deadly airstrike on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria two weeks earlier — were shot down by Israel’s military with help from Britain, Jordan and the United States. The only serious casualty was a 7-year-old girl, Amina al-Hasoni, who was badly wounded.
Stocks in the United States are rallying after Israel largely thwarted Iran’s attack over the weekend. Oil prices fell, also indicating a more sanguine response among investors to the weekend’s events, as turmoil in the Middle East could disrupt the supply of oil and push prices higher. The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent, and Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, fell 0.8 percent.
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel’s war cabinet reconvened this afternoon to discuss possible responses to Iran’s attack over the weekend, said an Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations.
The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council will meet in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss ways to calm tensions in the Middle East, Peter Stano, an E.U. spokesman, told reporters. He would not say whether E.U. foreign ministers would consider new sanctions on Iran in addition to ones already in place, including over weapons proliferation, human rights abuses and other violations. Stano said the E.U.’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, had spoken with Iran’s foreign minister on Sunday to condemn the attack and “to make sure there is no further escalation.”
(An earlier version of this update misstated the surname of the E.U. spokesman. He is Peter Stano, not Stanos.)
The Israeli border police killed one person they described as a “terrorist” and arrested another during a clash in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a statement from the police. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has killed and arrested hundreds of people it designated as terrorists in similar raids in the West Bank.
3 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel’s allies on Monday were strongly urging it not to retaliate against Iran for the missile and drone attack over the weekend, calling instead for a de-escalation of the tensions that have gripped the Middle East.
The Iranian aerial assault — itself a retaliation for a strike that killed Iranian commanders in Syria — was the first time that Tehran had launched open attacks against Israel from its own soil. As some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government called for a strong response, the United States, the Group of 7 nations, the European Union and the U.N. secretary general were among those counseling restraint.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government faces a delicate balancing act: how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while not alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. While the United States, Britain and France strongly condemned Iran’s actions and swiftly came to Israel’s defense to help intercept Tehran’s strikes, their calls for restraint highlighted the intense pressure Israel was facing not to fuel a wider Middle East conflict.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken emphasized the need to prevent further escalation in a flurry of calls on Sunday with his counterparts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Britain and Germany, according to State Department statements. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, called the Iranian attack — which involved hundreds of missiles and drones, nearly all of which were intercepted — “reckless and dangerous,” but a “total failure.”
“We are urging that they shouldn’t escalate,” Mr. Cameron told Sky News, referring to Israel. “This is a time to think with head as well as heart. To be smart as well as tough.”
His German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, went a bit further. Asked at a news conference on Monday whether Israel had the right to strike back, Ms. Baerbock said that “the right to self-defense means fending off an attack; retaliation is not a category in international law,” The Associated Press reported.
“Israel won in a defensive way,” she said, adding that “it is now important to secure this defensive victory diplomatically.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France also urged Israel to avoid a military escalation. He told French news media on Monday that France would work with allies to continue isolating Tehran by “increasing sanctions, increasing pressure on nuclear activities and then finding a path to peace in the region.”
The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council was scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss ways to calm the conflict and protect regional security, Peter Stano, an E.U. spokesman, told reporters on Monday, adding that “regional escalation will benefit no one.”
Iranian officials signaled on Sunday that they were seeking to prevent further escalation, and that Iran’s retaliation was over unless Israel struck back. On Sunday evening, Israel’s war cabinet met without deciding how to respond to Iran’s assault, an official who was briefed on the meeting said. The cabinet was scheduled to meet again on Monday afternoon, Israeli news media reported.
Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Rome.
4 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
Following the Iranian attack over the weekend, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, accused Israel on Monday of “dragging the region into war,” according to a statement from his office.
4 hours ago
Stanley Reed covers energy from London.
Oil markets shrugged off the growing tensions in the Middle East, after Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones against Israel over the weekend. On Monday morning, prices for Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, fell by about 1 percent, to $89.49 a barrel.
So far, there has been relief that the much-anticipated attack did little damage and had no effect on supplies. Oil prices had already increased substantially in the days before the assault, rising above the symbolic $90 a barrel level last week.
There is a sense in the market that prices are higher than would be justified based on the fundamentals of supply and demand. In a note after Iran’s onslaught on Saturday, Goldman Sachs estimated this risk premium at $5 to $10 a barrel.
Rystad Energy, a consulting firm, calculates that on fundamentals, Brent should be selling for $84 a barrel.
Essentially, the markets seem to be waiting to see what happens next. Iran appears to want to end this particular episode for now, while Israel is pondering its response.
The big worry is that if the conflict escalates, Iran, which occupies a strategic position on the shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf, could resort to “attacking tankers, pipelines and critical energy infrastructure,” said Helima Croft, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank.
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