Instead, Israel has agreed to focus its next attack on military targets in Iran, the officials said.
The Israeli government has told the Biden administration that it will avoid striking nuclear enrichment and oil production sites when it makes its initial response to Iran’s recent missile attack, two officials said on Tuesday.
Such a move would reduce the likelihood that Israel’s retaliation will immediately set off an all-out war between the two adversaries, amid concerns in Washington over being dragged into a bigger Middle East confrontation with the presidential election just weeks away.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that Israel had agreed to focus its next attack on military targets in Iran, instead of those related to Iran’s oil industry or its uranium enrichment efforts. The pledge was first reported by the Washington Post.
While no final decision is believed to have been made, an Israeli retaliation could still be large in scale, possibly prompting Iran to continue the cycle of attacks. And the officials said that Israel’s assurances related only to its next attack — meaning that it could still pursue more ambitious targets in future rounds of fighting with Iran.
For decades, Iran has sought Israel’s destruction while Israel has pushed to collapse the Iranian regime, leading to a decades-long shadow war in which each side has secretly attacked the other’s interests and supported the other’s enemies.
That covert war has broken out into the open in recent months, partly because of Israel’s war with Hamas, an ally and proxy of Iran. Hamas unsuccessfully tried to persuade Iran to participate in the attack on Israel last October that prompted Israel to invade Gaza, according to documents obtained by The Times, but Iran has supported Hamas with funds and diplomatic support.
