The US claimed on Tuesday that it was unaware of Israel’s plans to blow up thousands of pagers inside Lebanon, an attack that killed at least nine people and wounded thousands.
State Department spokesman Matt Miller insisted the US “was not aware of this operation and was not involved.” He said the US was still “gathering information” about the coordinated attack.
Later on Tuesday, US officials who were “briefed on the operation” confirmed to The New York Times that Israel was behind the attack. They said Israel planted explosives in pagers that Hezbollah ordered from a company based in Taiwan.
The Israeli attack came after the Israeli Security Cabinet added the return of displaced Israelis to their homes near the border with Lebanon as one of Israel’s war goals. Israeli officials told Axios that the purpose of this decision was to signal that Israel was going to turn its attention from Gaza to Lebanon.
The pager attack also came after the US reportedly warned Israel against launching a wider war in Lebanon. But the US has also pledged to support Israel if the situation escalates into a full-blown war and provided intelligence support when Israel and Hezbollah traded heavy fire in August.
Hezbollah is vowing that it will retaliate to the indiscriminate Israeli attack, which killed an eight-year-old girl, saying Israel will receive its “fair punishment.”
The constant flow of US military aid to Israel has supported Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza as well as its escalations throughout the region. The US also defended Israel from an Iranian attack in April that was provoked by the Israeli bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus and has vowed to do so again if Iran responds to the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
Photo: Medics collect blood donations in Beirut's southern suburb on Sept. 17, 2024 © AFP via Getty Images.
Source: AntiWar.
