Joe Biden has urged Israel against striking Iran’s oil facilities, a day after he said the United States was discussing the possibility of such strikes with its ally.
“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Mr Biden said on Friday, adding that Israel had yet to decide on its promised response to Tehran’s ballistic missile attack on Tuesday.
“That’s under discussion,” he told reporters, but warned Israel had to be “very much more careful” in its retaliation in regards to civilian casualties.
It is an apparent reversal of his remark on Thursday that he was considering an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil production – a comment that triggered a spike in crude oil prices.
Mr Biden said earlier this week that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be disproportionate. His decision drew a sharp rebuke from Donald Trump who told Fox News: “That’s the craziest thing I have ever heard” as he warned that Iran was “soon” going to have nuclear weapons.
The former president, speaking later at a campaign event in North Carolina, referred to the question posed to Mr Biden about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear programme.
“When they asked him that question, the answer should have been: ‘Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later’,” Trump said.
Earlier on Friday, Iran threatened to retaliate to any direct attacks by Israel by striking the country’s energy and gas infrastructure.
“If the occupiers make such a mistake, we will target all their energy sources, installations and all refineries and gas fields,” said Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on Friday.
The threat came shortly after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a rare sermon, describing its missile attack a “legitimate” act in response to Israel’s killing of Nasrallah and the July assassination of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Earlier on Friday, two Israeli soldiers were killed in a drone attack launched by Iran-backed militants from Iraq.
frizzykid on October 4th, 2024 at 21:13 UTC »
This title is a bit misleading.
In other words, the title makes it sound like Joe just told bibi "no dont do that". What actually happened is, yesterday Joe said they should target Iranian oil refineries, Crude oil prices spiked, Iran made the issues worse when they said that if Israel did that, they'd attack oil fields all over the Arabian peninsula, today, likely in an effort to cool down that spike in the price of oil, he said, not to bibi but to press "if I was him, I'd think of other alternatives". Not what the title of the article says, which is tantamount to "Don't do it bibi"
(Not blaming you OP you were just following the submission guidelines)
OmOshIroIdEs on October 4th, 2024 at 20:42 UTC »
Didn’t the Saudis say yesterday that they might flood the market and bring oil under $50 a barrel? Wouldn’t that be a good move for them, given how much they hate Iran?
Flux_State on October 4th, 2024 at 20:23 UTC »
Unsurprising. The number of oilfields within range of Iran's cheapest drones is mind boggling. Plus shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. They could cause global economic upheaval if they felt the Israeli response went too far.