Israel still plans to launch Rafah assault, Netanyahu tells western diplomats

Benjamin Netanyahu has told western diplomats that he will go ahead with a ground offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza, and has also suggested that Israel’s anticipated reprisal for Iran’s missile and drone salvo will be aimed at Iranian interests rather than Tehran’s proxies.

The Israeli leader has sought to assure anxious allies that Israel’s response to Iran will be measured, while also claiming he will flood Gaza with aid and ensure that civilians and aid agencies are given ample opportunity to flee Rafah, the last relative refuge for at least 1.4 million displaced Palestinians.

The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, accepted on Wednesday before meeting Netanyahu that some kind of Israeli action against Iran was now inevitable.

Western officials said the emphasis on an attack on Rafah – Hamas’s last military redoubt in Gaza – reflected the renewed confidence with which Netanyahu was viewing the politics of the Middle East, after western allies rallied round Israel after the Iranian attack. Some of the pressure to ostracise Israel has eased.

US officials including the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were due to be briefed by their Israeli counterparts on Israel’s plans for a Rafah offensive.

The US faces a dilemma since so far it has said it has not seen any credible Israeli plan to oust Hamas that would not lead to a humanitarian disaster. But the US language ruling out an attack on Rafah has gradually been weakening.

Netanyahu has always said he is committed to a “total military victory” and that the goal is unachievable without assaulting the final four Hamas brigades said to be operating in the tunnels under the town.

Cameron and the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, urged Netanyahu to take the win of the failed Iranian weekend strike on Israel, and to refocus his efforts on seeking a ceasefire deal with Hamas that leads to the release of the remaining Israeli hostages.

But the mood of despondency gathering around the hostage talks being brokered by Egypt and Qatar was reflected in an admission by Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, that his country was now “reassessing our role as mediator”.

Talks toward a ceasefire had stalled, he said. He said his country was undertaking “a complete re-evaluation of its role because there has been damage to Qatar”.

He said: “Unfortunately we have seen that there has been an abuse of this mediation and an abuse of this mediation in favour of narrow political interests.

“There is exploitation and abuse of the Qatari role,” he added, blaming politicians “who are trying to conduct election campaigns by slighting the state of Qatar.”

The prime minister did not identify the subject of his ire, but Qatar has become angered at accusations from some Republican congressmen that it is too close to Hamas and is not putting the necessary pressure on Hamas negotiators to make concessions. Netanyahu was heard describing Qatar’s mediator role as “problematic”.

One source said the difficulty was that Hamas did not have control of the number of living hostages needed to secure the number of Palestinian prisoners it wants.

It is argued that the US remains in a strong negotiating position with Israel since it is estimated that as many as 60% of the Iranian missiles and drones launched on Saturday were struck by the US rather than Israel itself.

At a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Capri, the western delegates led by the US backed further sanctions against Tehran, targeting its unarmed aerial vehicle production, which was at the centre of the weekend attack as well as Russia’s offensive against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

The US and its allies in the G7 hold little hope that the sanctions measures will be enough to assuage the Israeli cabinet’s demand to launch a military reprisal against Iran. A direct appeal to Cameron by the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, at their meeting on Wednesday for the UK to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was cut short by Cameron, who told Katz that the UK had resolved not to go down the route.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: “We are on the edge of a war in the Middle East which will be sending shockwaves to the rest of the world.”

Brig Gen Ahmed Haq Talab, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards unit charged with protecting Iran’s nuclear facilities, said his country was on alert to repel any Israeli attack, adding that Iranian nuclear centres “enjoy complete security”.

Western officials have the impression that Israel will not attack Iran’s nuclear sites, but one possible target could be IRGC officers and equipment positioned outside Iran.

The US Treasury Department statement said the measures targeted 16 individuals and two entities enabling Iran’s UAV production, including engine types that power Iran’s Shahed variant UAVs, which were used in the 13 April attack.

The Treasury said it was also designating five companies in multiple jurisdictions providing component materials for steel production to Iran’s Khouzestan Steel Company (KSC), one of Iran’s largest steel producers, or buying KSC’s finished steel products.

Also targeted, the statement said, were three subsidiaries of the Iranian automaker Bahman Group, which it said had materially supported the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The statement said that, concurrent with the Treasury action, Britain was imposing sanctions targeting several Iranian military organisations, individuals and entities involved in Iran’s UAV and ballistic missile industries.

Parallel decisions were considered at an EU heads of government meeting in Brussels. Katz welcomed the EU’s decision to ramp up Iran’s sanctions, calling it “an important step on the way to defanging the snake”. According to Katz, “Iran must be stopped now before it is too late.”

Britain in its sanctions package said it was targeting Iran’s defence minister and other military figures and organisations including the Armed Forces General Staff and the IRGC navy.

“The Iranian regime’s attack against Israel was a reckless act and a dangerous escalation,” the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said in a statement. “Today we have sanctioned the ringleaders of the Iranian military and forces responsible for the weekend’s attack.”

Britain’s sanctions, amounting to 13 in total, also target individuals whom it described as key actors within Iran’s drone and missile industries.

In New York, the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, said that his country had sent several “messages” to the US to confirm that Iran “does not seek to expand tensions” in the Middle East with Israel.

Leaked US intelligence suggested Israel had miscalculated Iran’s response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April, which killed two senior IRGC generals.