US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin vowed on Tuesday that the United States will come to Israel’s defense if the Jewish state is attacked by Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon.

“We would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion,” Austin told reporters after meetings in Manila with senior Philippine officials. “If Israel is attacked, yes, we will we help Israel defend itself. We’ve been clear about that from the very beginning.”

Austin’s comment came as tensions continued to escalate between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel on Tuesday targeted Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, with an air strike in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday and reportedly believes it killed the long-time terrorist leader. The Algemeiner could not independently confirm Shukr’s current status.

The Israeli strike was a response to a Hezbollah rocket attack over the weekend on a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a small Druze town in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria. The attack from southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah exerts major political and military influence, killed 12 children. The Jewish state vowed that Hezbollah would pay a “heavy price” for the strike.

Although many observers have expressed fear that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could soon spiral out of control, Austin argued that a full-scale war was not inevitable.

“I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable,” Austin told reporters.

Austin’s comments echoed sentiments from the White House, which said that the likelihood of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah is “exaggerated.” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday that the Biden administration is “confident” that such a conflict full-scale war between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed terrorist group will be avoided.

Nonetheless, Hezbollah has indicated that it will retaliate after Israel’s defensive strike on Tuesday. The terrorist group has thus far reportedly rejected requests from international envoys not to respond to the Israeli operation.

“International envoys are indirectly raising with us the idea that we should not respond to the expected aggression under the pretext of the need to avoid escalation and sliding towards a comprehensive war,” a Hezbollah official said, according to Reuters. The official added that Hezbollah had “informed them of our explicit rejection of this request” and would respond.

Hezbollah has pummeled northern Israeli communities with a barrage of missiles, rockets, and drones in the months following the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel perpetrated by Hamas, another Iran-backed terrorist group. Estimates suggest that Hezbollah, an Iranian-proxy terrorist organization, has fired between 100-200 missiles into northern Israel nearly every day since Oct. 7.

More than 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate Israel’s north in October due to the unrelenting attacks. The majority of those spent the past nine months residing in hotels in other areas of Israel.

Nevertheless, the US State Department said it’s working to find a diplomatic solution to avoid further escalation.

“We’re continuing to work toward a diplomatic resolution that would allow Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return to their homes and live in peace and security. We certainly want to avoid any kind of escalation,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a press briefing on Tuesday.

Patel added that American support for the Jewish state will remain “ironclad.”

“Israel has every right to defend itself,” Patel said, noting that the Jewish state “certainly faces threats like no other country does in that region of the world.”

During his address to a joint session of the US Congress last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that although he would prefer to reach a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Lebanese Hezbollah, the Jewish state is willing to use force to defend itself.

“We prefer to achieve this diplomatically. But let me be clear: Israel will do whatever it must do to restore security to our northern border and return our people safely to their homes,” Netanyahu said.

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