REHOBOTH BEACH, Delaware, USA (AP) The Israeli attack that killed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the political-paramilitary group Hezbollah, was a measure of justice for the victims of his four-decade reign of terror, the American President Joe Biden.
The comments came after the Lebanese group Hezbollah confirmed earlier Saturday that Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut the previous day.
Biden said the operation to eliminate Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict, which began with the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join Hamas and open what he called a northern front against Israel, Biden said in a statement.
He also indicated that, under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese.
Hezbollah attacks against US interests include the truck bombing of the US embassy and multinational forces headquarters in Beirut in 1983, as well as the kidnapping of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Beirut. , who died as a captive. The United States claims that Hezbollah leaders armed and trained militias that later carried out attacks on American forces during the war in Iraq.
The White House considers Nasrallah’s death a serious blow to the group. At the same time, the US government has acted cautiously as it tries to prevent Israel’s war with Hams, which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran, from becoming a full-blown regional conflict.
The White House and Pentagon publicly indicated on Friday, shortly after the attack, that Israel did not warn about the operation.
The confirmation of Nasrallah’s death comes in a week that began with Biden’s top security advisers working on supplementary UN General Assembly activities to build support for a 21-day ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, which could breathe new life into the bogged-down attempts to reach a truce in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant speech Friday to the UN, pledging to maintain operations against Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israeli citizens displaced by rocket attacks can return home. Shortly thereafter, Israel carried out the attack that killed Nasrallah.
Biden reiterated on Saturday that he wants to see a ceasefire both in Gaza and between Israel and Hezbollah.
It is time for these agreements to be reached, for the threats to Israel to disappear and for the Middle East region to acquire greater stability, Biden said.
For his part, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused the United States of supporting the attack that killed Nasrallah and dozens of others.
The international community must not forget that the order for the terrorist attack was issued from New York and that the Americans cannot absolve themselves of their complicity with the Zionists, Pezeshkian said according to a statement read on Iran’s state television.
The US State Department on Saturday ordered the departure of the families of US diplomats who do not work for the embassy in Beirut and authorized the departure of those employed by the embassy, as well as non-essential workers, due to the volatile and unpredictable security situation in the capital of Lebanon.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut also posted a link to an online form that Americans in Lebanon can fill out if they are interested in receiving help leaving the nation.
The embassy stressed that it was not organizing evacuations and that commercial means of exit still exist, but the request for information seemed to suggest that such plans could be underway.
The State Department has previously advised U.S. citizens to consider leaving Lebanon and has reiterated its warning against traveling to the country.
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