Joe Biden says U.S. helped Israel take down ‘nearly all’ Iran’s missiles

President Joe Biden said the United States helped Israel take down “nearly all” of the drones and missiles launched during Iran’s attack on Saturday.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Iran fired over 200 drones and missiles in the attack, which included more than 100 bomb-carrying drones toward Israel followed by a wave of cruise and ballistic missiles. A spokesperson for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said even though Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles that a vast majority were intercepted. At least one IDF base in southern Israel was hit and one child was injured, according to information available at the time of publication.

Tehran had been threatening to launch an attack on Israel after an airstrike earlier this month destroyed Iran’s consulate in Syria, killing 12 people, including two top Iranian generals and five officers.

Biden, who has maintained support for U.S. ally Israel since the Middle Eastern nation’s war with Hamas began, met with his national security team to monitor the situation. In a statement, the president said U.S. forces assisted in defending Israel from Iran’s aerial threats.

“Earlier today, Iran—and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria and Iraq—launched an unprecedented air attack against military facilities in Israel. I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms,” Biden said. “At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week. Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

The president said he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reaffirming Washington’s “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel.”

Biden said on Sunday he will meet with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

The president continued: “While we have not seen attacks on our forces or facilities today, we will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.”

Newsweek reached out via email on Saturday evening to representatives for Tehran for comment.

Meanwhile, in a post on social media, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to punish Israel in response to the deadly strike on the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Syria.

A letter obtained by Newsweek Saturday night that was written by Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saied Iravani and addressed to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. Security Council President Vanessa Frazier listed Iran’s reasoning for the historic attack. It provided official notice and informed U.N. leadership that, “in the late hours of 13 April 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out a series of military strikes on Israeli military objectives.”

The document referenced earlier warnings of a “decisive response” to Israel’s killing of seven Iranian military personnel at an Iranian consular building in Damascus, an act that Iravani argued was a violation of the U.N. Charter.

“This action was in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense as outlined in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations,” the letter said.

Tension between Israel and Iran has heightened since the start of the Israel-Hamas war when the Palestinian militant group launched a surprise attack killing 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel subsequently launched an operation to target Hamas in Gaza, killing over 30,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

U.S. and Israeli officials have both accused Iran of providing not only political, but also material backing to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as other militias abroad such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, and an array of forces in Iraq and Syria.