2024-09-22 22:39:25
White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk said the Biden administration does not mourn Israel’s killing of senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, but hinted the US may not agree to the move given the risk of regional escalation.
“Ibrahim Aqil, who was killed today, was responsible for the embassy bombing in Beirut 40 years ago. So no one sheds tears for him,” McGurk said Friday at a conference of the Israeli-American Council in Washington.
“However, we have differences with the Israelis on tactics and assessment of the risk of escalation. This is a very worrying situation. I am confident that through diplomacy, deterrence and other means we will find a way out of it,” he added.
“We do not believe that war in Lebanon is the way to achieve the goal of people returning to their homes. We also fully support Israel in defending its people and territory from Hezbollah,” McGurk continued. “We want a diplomatic solution in the north. That is the goal, and that is what we are working toward.”
The White House and State Department have largely remained silent on the Hezbollah device explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands, including civilians, in what analysts say was a high-tech Israeli intelligence operation.
Earlier, Cursor wrote that when asked whether the US still had hope for a Gaza deal, US President Joe Biden said on Friday that there was hope and his team was continuing to work on it.
“If I ever said this wasn’t realistic, we might as well walk away,” Biden told reporters. “A lot of things don’t seem realistic until we do them. We’ve got to keep working on it.”