The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Israeli officials urgently reached out to their American counterparts on October 11, relaying that they had compiled intelligence pointing to an imminent Hezbollah cross-border attack akin to the one carried out by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were massacred in Israel and roughly 240 were taken hostage.
Recognizing that the IDF could not pull off such a major strike against Hezbollah on its own, Israel was asking the US for assistance, the Journal said, citing unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
It was 6:30 a.m., and Biden’s top aides gathered for a meeting in which they went on to determine that US intelligence didn’t line up with what Israel was warning of, WSJ said.
Upon being briefed on what was unfolding, Biden phoned Netanyahu to relay Washington’s skepticism over the Israeli intelligence and urged the premier throughout the 45-minute call not to move forward with the strike, saying that a two-front war was still avoidable but an IDF attack of this sort would make it inevitable. READ MORE