U.S. Pledges to Defend Israel in Case of Iranian Attack

TEL AVIV, Israel—Warnings of a potentially imminent attack by Iran on Israeli soil have set off a diplomatic scramble to avoid what would be an unprecedented escalation of the war in the Middle East.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant late Thursday, to reassure him Washington would defend its closest ally in the region if Tehran struck on its soil. Austin told Gallant “Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, which Tehran has publicly threatened,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

The call came after The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that Israel was preparing for a direct attack by Iran on southern or northern Israel as soon as Friday or Saturday. A person briefed by the Iranian leadership, however, said that while options for a strike against Israeli interests—including a direct attack on Israel with sophisticated medium-range missiles—had been presented to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, no final decision had been made.

Iran has publicly threatened to retaliate for an attack last week in Damascus, Syria, that Tehran said was an Israeli airstrike on a diplomatic building. The strike killed several top Iranian military officials, including a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force.

An Iranian strike on Israel would represent a dangerous escalation at a time when the country is under growing international pressure to wrap up its military campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, and Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza, which has claimed more than 33,000 lives, have already ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East to a level not seen in decades.

In their phone call on Thursday, Gallant told Austin that “a direct Iranian attack would require an appropriate Israeli response against Iran,” the Israeli defense ministry said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to meet senior security officials, including Gallant, later Friday to discuss Israel’s readiness for an Iranian response, according to Israeli officials.

A possible Iranian attack was at the top of the news in Israel, with some people feeling an underlying sense of unease. Yet in Tel Aviv, most residents went normally about their day on Friday, flocking into cafes and shops on the first day of the Israeli weekend.

“We are strong. We are not afraid,” said Andrey Uchitel, 48, who took a leisurely walk with his friend on the Tel Aviv boardwalk. “It will be OK in the end.”

Israel’s Home Front Command, which is tasked with preparing the public for disasters and conflict, hasn’t issued any changes to its emergency instructions to the public, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Thursday night.

Last week—after Khamenei publicly threatened retaliation for the Damascus strike and Israel disrupted local GPS networks that can be used to target weapons—the military sought to calm public panic over an attack. “There is no need to buy generators, store food and withdraw money from” cash machines, Hagari said at the time.

The U.S., which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Tehran, has encouraged its European and Middle Eastern allies to pressure Iran not to attack Israel, American and British officials said on Friday.

The foreign ministers of Germany and the U.K.—Annalena Baerbock and David Cameron—called their Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, on Thursday to ask Tehran not to attack Israel, according to British and Iranian officials.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two U.S. allies in the Middle East, conveyed the same message to the Islamic Republic, the officials said.

France on Friday pulled family members of its diplomatic staff from Tehran and advised its citizens to refrain from traveling to Iran, Lebanon, Israel or the Palestinian territories in the coming days. It also banned missions by French officials to those countries.

The American Embassy in Israel said Thursday that U.S. government employees and family members would be restricted from any personal travel outside of central Israel, Jerusalem and Beersheba until further notice. German airline Lufthansa also extended the suspension of its flights to Tehran due to the situation in the Middle East until Saturday.

Attacks by rockets and drones from Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and more recently from places like Iraq and Yemen, have become commonplace in Israel. Most are intercepted by Israel’s air-defense system or fall in unpopulated areas.

The scenarios for a potential attack on Israel that have been presented to Khamenei include strikes by Tehran’s proxies in Syria and Iraq, according to advisers to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Syrian government.

To avoid an attack within Israel’s internationally recognized territory, Iran and its allies could also attack the Golan Heights, a disputed territory annexed by Israel from Syria in 1981, the advisers said. Another option would be to hit Israeli embassies, notably in the Arab world, to show them that friendly ties with Israel could be costly, these people said.

In recent days, social-media accounts associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have stepped up messaging around a potential attack on Israel. Several widely shared posts include satellite images of prominent locations in Israel, such as Ben Gurion Airport, surrounded by Iranian attack drones.

“What place do you love? The choice is in your hands,” the posts, which were picked up by several Israeli media, say in Hebrew.

Another post includes a video showing an Iranian hypersonic missile with the Farsi caption “5 minutes to Haifa and Tel Aviv.”

Write to Benoit Faucon at [email protected]