Biden and Netanyahu Speak for the First Time in Months as Mideast Crisis Deepens

The conversation carried the weight of the worst relationship between the United States and Israel in years.

By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt

For the first time in two months, President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Wednesday in a phone conversation that was expected to focus on Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran for a missile attack.

But it also carried the weight of the worst relationship between the United States and Israel in years.

The conversation on a secure line, which also included Vice President Kamala Harris, began shortly after 10:30 a.m., the Israeli news media reported. The White House confirmed the conversation had taken place and promised a description of it soon.

Recent history, though, suggests that Mr. Biden’s advisers were unlikely to offer details of the conversation, particularly on whether Mr. Netanyahu would comply with Mr. Biden’s demand to avoid striking Iran’s nuclear sites and energy facilities.

The call came at a moment when U.S. national security officials believe the Middle East is on a knife’s edge. They have told Mr. Biden that after the missile attack by Iran on Oct. 1, which did relatively little damage in Israel, Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not looking to enter a broader war.

But U.S. officials believe that if Israel reacts to the strikes by going after Iran’s most sensitive sites, the result could be an uncontrolled escalation. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, posted a video on Wednesday around the time of the call. “Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising,” he said, which seemed to suggest that some kind of covert action in Iran might be the central element. “They will not understand what happened and how it happened,” he added. “They will see the results.”

The concerns about escalation — further inflaming what has already turned into a regional conflict — explains why Mr. Biden has been so public in his warnings to Mr. Netanyahu. Yet time after time in the past year, the Israeli leader has largely ignored the American president, betting that Mr. Biden did not have the political latitude to cut off arms or aid to Jerusalem.

White House officials, worried after they were blindsided by a series of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, demanded the conversation on Wednesday and insisted that it take place before Israel conducted a counterattack.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was reported to be “angry beyond words,” one administration official said, because the absence of clear advance notice about the attacks in Lebanon put the lives of Americans in the Middle East at risk.

Top American officials said they were mostly concerned about making sure that Iran and Israel did not get into an uncontrolled escalation of their long-running shadow war. In the past six months, that conflict has expanded to include three rounds of direct missile attacks from one country against the other. This was the first year direct attacks took place since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The lack of communication between the United States and Israel, two countries that have described themselves as the closest of allies since Israel’s creation in 1948, reflected the deeper breach in the relationship.

Mr. Biden has been widely reported over the past year to have emerged from conversations with Mr. Netanyahu uttering a string of epithets about the Israeli leader.

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu believes that Mr. Biden’s constant efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza, and more recently in Lebanon, would have squandered Israel’s best chance in decades to deal major blows to Hamas and Hezbollah, according to U.S. officials familiar with their conversations. In the prime minister’s view, Israel has scored major tactical victories over both Hamas and Hezbollah by destroying much of their leadership ranks.

In Hezbollah’s case, U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials believe that half or more of its arsenal of missiles, all designed to strike Israeli targets, has been destroyed.

U.S. officials have argued that it is time for Israel to cement its tactical gains over Hamas and Hezbollah into a broader strategic victory, including some political agreements on cease-fires and, ultimately, toward a two-state solution that would give Palestinians a homeland. But they fear that Mr. Netanyahu is not interested and is trying to revive his reputation after being taken by surprise by the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.

The conversation between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu came after Mr. Gallant, the defense minister, scheduled and then canceled a trip to Washington to see Mr. Austin, his American counterpart. And the reasons seemed to say more about the splits in Mr. Netanyahu’s badly divided national security team than it did about the debate over what to strike in Iran.

Pentagon officials sought to play down the abrupt postponement of Mr. Gallant’s visit on Wednesday, though they acknowledged it was a missed, or at least delayed, opportunity to discuss in detail Israel’s military response to Iran’s recent missile barrage.

It had also been seen as a moment to help reset personal relations between Mr. Gallant and Mr. Austin. While the two defense leaders generally have good relations — aides said they had spoken more than 80 times since the Oct. 7 attacks — even military ties have been a bit frayed lately.

Senior Defense Department officials complained that the Israelis had not been completely candid or timely in alerting the United States to recent important Israeli operations, including the assassination last month of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

Mr. Gallant had informed Mr. Austin during a phone call as the Israeli operation was underway. Pentagon officials said Mr. Austin was seething that the Israelis had not given more notice to allow U.S. troops in the region to increase defensive measures against potential Iranian retaliation.

When asked about Mr. Austin’s reaction, Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters that “he was caught off guard.”

In a phone call on Sunday, Mr. Austin made clear to Mr. Gallant that the United States wanted Israel to avoid steps in retaliation for Iran’s missile barrage that could result in a new escalation by the Iranians, a senior Pentagon official said on Monday. The two men had been expected to discuss options in more detail in the face-to-face meeting on Wednesday. Now that will have to wait.

“Certainly, in-person visits allow for just, you know, deepening of the relationship, being in person,” Ms. Singh told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Later, she added, “We’re confident that we’re going to continue to engage the Israelis, whether it be here in person at the Pentagon or over the phone.”

The Pentagon has other channels of communication with senior Israeli military leaders.

Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said on Monday that he had spent Saturday and Sunday in Israel talking to Mr. Gallant and senior Israeli commanders.

“We discussed ongoing Iranian-backed threats to the region and efforts to stabilize the region, ensure Israel’s security and deter Iran’s malign and reckless activities,” General Kurilla said in a statement.

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt