President Joe Biden played a critical role in curtailing the scale of the war in the Middle East by reportedly convincing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt preemptive strikes against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Oct. 11, four days after Hamas's surprise attack, regarding Israeli intelligence that Hezbollah was preparing to cross the border into northern Israel as part of a multi-front attack on the Jewish state, according to the Wall Street Journal. United States intelligence forces deemed the information unreliable, prompting the talks between the two leaders.
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Israeli officials contacted the White House that morning asking for American support pending the inevitable response from the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group.
CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs CQ Brown, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan met that morning to discuss Israel's proposed plans. The group there determined that U.S. intelligence did not correspond with Israeli reports.
After Biden was briefed, he spent 45 minutes speaking to Netanyahu in an attempt to convince the Israeli leader and his war Cabinet that a broader regional war could be avoided.
After approximately six hours of back-and-forth phone calls between U.S. and Israeli officials, Netanyahu called off the strike on Hezbollah.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah forces have continued to escalate since October, however, with the two forces exchanging fire on a near-daily basis.
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Biden's strategy in the conflict has been primarily diplomatic, attempting to prevent the conflict from engulfing the entire region.
The U.S. has bolstered its military presence in the region, sending two aircraft strike groups and a nuclear submarine to the eastern Mediterranean. American forces also created a special naval task force in the Red Sea to deal with Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.