US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are to speak Wednesday, a source familiar with the issue said, as Israel weighs up its response to last week’s missile attack by Iran.
The scheduled call comes amid tensions between the two leaders, and would be their first since August 21, a seven-week gap during which Israel also launched an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear program and is also against a strike on the country’s oil installations, which would send oil prices spiking less than a month before the US presidential election.
During their talks, Biden is expected to press Netanyahu for details about how Israel, a key US ally, intends to retaliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had been due to visit Washington on Wednesday but the visit was postponed, with Israeli media reporting that Netanyahu had demanded the cabinet decide on the action to be taken before Gallant’s departure.
Despite sending Israel billions of dollars in military aid since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Biden appears to have had little leverage over Netanyahu’s pursuit of wars in Gaza and now in Lebanon.
A new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward details the growing rift, with Biden telling Netanyahu in July that “the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” The New York Times reported.
His frustration also boiled over earlier this year with Biden telling aides that Netanyahu was a “son of a bitch” and a “bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” The Washington Post quoted the book by the Watergate reporter as saying.
The White House said Tuesday that it would not comment on “anecdotes” in Woodward’s book but said the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu “goes back decades, they can have very honest and straightforward conversations with each other.”
