US President Joe Biden on Saturday called the Israeli attack that killed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the political-paramilitary group Hezbollah, a “measure of justice” for his four-decade reign of terror.
The comments came after the Lebanese group Hezbollah confirmed on Saturday that Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut the previous day.
Biden noted that the operation to eliminate Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict, which began with the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
“Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join Hamas and open what he called a ‘northern front’ against Israel,” Biden said in a statement.
He also indicated that, under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese.
Hezbollah attacks against US interests include the truck bombing of the US embassy and multinational forces headquarters in Beirut in 1983, as well as the kidnapping of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Beirut. , who died as a captive.
The United States claims that Hezbollah leaders armed and trained militias that later carried out attacks on American forces during the war in Iraq.
The White House considers Nasrallah’s death a serious blow to the group. At the same time, the U.S. government has acted cautiously as it tries to prevent Israel’s war with Hamas, which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran, from turning into a full-blown regional conflict.
On Friday, the White House and Pentagon publicly indicated shortly after the attack that Israel did not warn about the operation.
The confirmation of Nasrallah’s death comes in a week that began with Biden’s top security advisers working on supplementary UN General Assembly activities to build support for a 21-day ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, which could breathe new life into the bogged-down attempts to reach a truce in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant speech Friday to the UN, pledging to maintain operations against Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israeli citizens displaced by rocket attacks can return home. Shortly afterward, Israel carried out the attack that killed Nasrallah.
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