Report: After uncoordinated Nasrallah killing, US warned Israel it could be alone in repelling response

The Wall Street Journal reports that US President Joe Biden’s administration is frustrated that the Israeli government is refusing to tell it anything about its planned retaliation to Iran’s missile attack last week, adding details from a previous time this recently happened.

Citing unnamed US officials, the American news site says that after Jerusalem surprised Washington by assassinating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah late last month without coordination with the White House, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was blunt in a subsequent phone call with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“Excuse me, what did you say?” Austin reportedly asked Gallant when the latter told him about the operation.

Later that day, during a second phone call between the two, Austin asked Gallant if Jerusalem was ready to defend itself on its own, since the US hadn’t had time to deploy its forces to deflect a potential immediate reprisal by Hezbollah, according to the report.