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Biden Administration Urges Israel to Tone Down Response to Hezbollah Aggression in Bid to Avert Wider Conflict
Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of Wissam Tawil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces who according to Lebanese security sources was killed during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, in Khirbet Selm, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
The Biden administration has been pushing the Israeli government to de-escalate hostilities with Hezbollah to prevent a full-scale war from breaking out along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where the powerful Iran-backed terrorist group wields significant political and military influence.
In Israel’s north, Hezbollah terrorists have been firing rockets at Israel daily from southern Lebanon since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, leading Israeli forces to strike back. Tensions have been escalating between both sides, fueling concerns that the conflict in Gaza — the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, another Iran-backed Islamist terrorist group, to Israel’s south — could escalate into a regional conflict.
More than 80,000 Israelis evacuated Israel’s north in October and have since been unable to return to their homes. The majority of those spent the past eight months residing in hotels in safer areas of the country. The mass displacement has ramped up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to find a swift resolution to the situation.
The ongoing conflict between both sides escalated on Tuesday when senior Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdullah was killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching over 200 missiles into northern Israel.
During Abdullah’s funeral, senior Hezbollah official Hachem Saffieddine vowed that the terrorist group would intensify its strikes on Israel.
“Our response after the martyrdom of Abu Taleb will be to intensify our operations in severity, strength, quantity and quality,” Saffieddine said. “Let the enemy wait for us in the battlefield.”
In Israel, meanwhile, officials have said they prefer a diplomatic solution to the current crisis but are prepared to escalate military action to push Hezbollah back from the border in order to allow internally displaced Israelis to return home. Polling has shown that the majority of the Israeli public wants the military to engage in expanded actions against the Lebanese terrorist group, which is committed to Israel’s destruction.
The Biden administration has been advising Netanyahu against pursuing the idea of a “limited war” against Hezbollah, arguing that it could spark a regional war throughout the Middle East. According to multiple reports, US officials have warned Israel that Iran could dispatch militants from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen into Lebanon to bolster Hezbollah’s effort.
The White House has also expressed concern that Israeli officials do not have a clear strategy on how to keep the war contained to solely Lebanon. Fear of a broader regional war has intensified the Biden administration’s urgency to finalize a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which launched the ongoing war in Gaza by slaughtering over 1,200 people throughout southern Israel and kidnapping more than 250 others on Oct. 7.
“We are concerned about an increase in activity in the north. We don’t want this to escalate to a broad regional conflict and we urge de-escalation,” a Pentagon spokesperson told reporters this week.
The Pentagon also released a statement saying that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin discussed efforts to “de-escalate tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border in the wake of Lebanese Hezbollah’s increased aggression.”
According to multiple reports, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden for energy and investment, will head to Israel on Monday in an effort to temper tensions between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Hochstein will meet with Netanyahu and Gallant with the goal of swaying them against green-lighting a “limited ground invasion” in Lebanon. Hochstein will reportedly also journey to Beirut to conduct discussions with Lebanese officials.
“There was a lot of work, diplomatic work done behind the scenes by several folks in the US administration, working with regional powers and our allies to try and tamp this down,” Hochstein has said regarding the prospect of a regional war erupting in the Middle East.
Hochstein argued that preventing a large-scale war between Israel and Lebanon requires “active engagement” with both parties and for the public of both countries to “understand the risks” of further escalation. He added that “despite the bravado talk” coming from government officials, Lebanese people do not to go to war with Israel.
“The bottom line is a lot of civilians will die,” Hochstein said.
Despite chest-thumping by Hezbollah leaders, experts believe that the elimination of Abdullah might cause Hezbollah to exercise caution in engaging further with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“The powerful elimination worries Hezbollah members. They now understand that the IDF knows much more about them than we do,” Professor Amatzia Baram told The Jerusalem Post. “Additionally, the operation indicates that Hezbollah’s field security is not airtight and that the organization’s intelligence system has been penetrated to such an extent that we were able to eliminate such an important sector commander. The IDF managed to infiltrate their networks and systems and identify the right people for elimination.”
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US Vetoes UN Security Council Demand for Gaza Ceasefire
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from Israel, June 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The United States vetoed a UN Security Council demand on Wednesday for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and unhindered aid access across the enclave.
“The United States has been clear we would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza,” Acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the council before the vote.
“This resolution would undermine diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire that reflects the realities on the ground, and embolden Hamas,” she said of the text that was put forward by 10 countries on the 15-member council.
The remaining 14 council members voted in favor of the draft resolution.
Israel has rejected calls for an unconditional or permanent ceasefire, saying Hamas cannot stay in Gaza. It has renewed its military offensive in Gaza – also seeking to free hostages held by Hamas – since ending a two-month ceasefire in March.
The war in Gaza has raged since 2023 after Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel in an Oct. 7 attack and took some 250 hostages back to the enclave.
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Trump Picks Lawyer Who Called Oct. 7 Attack a ‘Psyop’ to Lead Federal Watchdog Agency
Paul Ingrassia. Photo: Screenshot
Paul Ingrassia, a 29-year-old lawyer who was recently nominated by US President Donald Trump to lead a federal agency dedicated to combating corruption and protecting whistleblowers, seemingly dismissed the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2o23, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as a “psyop,” or “psychological operation, in resurfaced social media posts.
“This ‘war’ is yet another psyop to distract Americans from celebrating Columbus Day,” Ingrassia wrote on X/Twitter on Oct. 8, 2023.
“I think we could all admit at this stage that Israel/Palestine, much like Ukraine before it, and BLM before that, and covid/vaccine before that, was another psyop,” he posted a week later. “But sadly, people fell for it. And they’ll fall for the next one too.”
On the actual day of the Oct. 7 massacre, Ingrassia compared illegal immigration into the US to the Hamas-led onslaught.
“The amount of energy everyone has put into condemning Hamas (and prior to that, the Ukraine conflict) over the past 24 hours should be the same amount of energy we put into condemning our wide open border, which is a war comparable to the attack on Israel in terms of bloodshed — but made worse by the fact that it’s occurring in our very own backyard,” he posted. “We shouldn’t be beating the war drum, however tragic the events may be overseas, until we resolve our domestic problems first.”
Trump announced last week that he picked Ingrassia to serve as head of the US Office of Special Counsel, a position that requires confirmation by the Senate.
The Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal ethics agency that works to ensure fairness and accountability within the government. Ingrassia’s role, if he is confirmed, would involve investigating claims of wrongdoing, such as retaliation against whistleblowers or improper political activity in the workplace. The official can recommend disciplinary action and reports serious findings to Congress, helping to protect federal employees and uphold the integrity of the civil service system.
Ingrassia also maintains a relationship with and defends alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media. Tate wrote on X/Twitter that he refuses to “listen to women, Mexicans, or Jews” and that Jewish people are “subverting Western populations into mass genetic suicide” by advancing what he described as misguided immigration policy. Tate has also accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza against Palestinians and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
The furor surrounding Ingrassia is the latest dustup the Trump administration has had regarding controversial personnel and antisemitism.
The Trump administration’s appointment of Kingsley Wilson as deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense also sparked widespread criticism due to her history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and extremist views. Wilson, formerly associated with the Center for Renewing America, has a documented history of social media posts endorsing white supremacist ideologies, including claims about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank — a Jewish man whose wrongful conviction and subsequent murder galvanized the founding of the Anti-Defamation League. In 2023, she tweeted that Frank “raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl,” a statement aligning with neo-Nazi narratives.
Late last month, the Pentagon announced that Wilson will be promoted and serve as the department’s new press secretary.
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US Congress Pushes to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization
US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking at a press conference about the United States restricting weapons for Israel, at the US Capitol, Washington, DC. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Members of the US Congress are moving quickly to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an official terrorist organization.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced on Tuesday that he will reintroduce an updated version of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.
“In the coming days, I will be circulating and re-introducing a modernized version of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which I have been pushing for my entire Senate career,” he posted on X/Twitter. “The Muslim Brotherhood used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen their influence, but the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday asking US President Donald Trump to open an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that the group maintains “a documented history of promoting extremist ideologies.”
“Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all declared the Muslim Brotherhood an FTO [foriegn terrorist organization] over a decade ago, and France is considering its own action. Following suit would help the US disrupt the Muslim Brotherhood’s ability to recruit and finance terror around the globe,” Moskowitz wrote on X/Twitter.
The push to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood gained momentum last month, when the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) organized a meeting to help members of Congress develop “strategies to ban the growing threat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” the research group said in a press release.
“The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be the intellectual inspiration behind all Islamist groups (and their jihadist offshoots) that operate today, such as ISIS, al Qaeda, and Hamas,” ISGAP wrote in a 2023 report. “Sunni jihadist groups are grounded in the firm ideological roots that key MB [Muslim Brotherhood] ideologues pioneered in the last century.”
Hamas, the internationally designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades and perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust with its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both Cruz and Moskowitz noted that Hamas is a “branch” and an “affiliate” of the global Islamist movement.
While several countries in the Middle East have already classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the United States has yet to do the same, despite several attempts by Congress over the years. During Trump’s first term in office, officials in both the White House and Congress took initial steps toward sanctioning the group’s international branches, but a formal designation was never finalized.
US lawmakers believe they have identified multiple pathways to economically cripple the internationally designated terror organization. Congress could combat the Muslim Brotherhood by designating it a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or placing it on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list. Both options would levy heavy penalties on the group through methods such as freezing its assets or sanctioning its leadership.
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