Guardian makes unsourced claim that Israel urged US to attack Syria

A Guardian piece by their veteran journalist Simon Tisdall (“Ten grim lessons the world has learned from a decade of war in Syria”, March 7) included the following claim:

Israel worries about the build-up of Iranian Revolutionary Guard and pro-Tehran armed forces in Syria and Lebanon. It has launched hundreds of air strikes on Iran-linked targets there, and has urged the US to do likewise in reply to rocket and drone attacks in Iraq, the Gulf and Yemen.

Israel urged President Biden to launch attacks on Iranian forces in Syria and Lebanon? We’ve never come across this claim before in any other media outlet.

The link embedded in Tisdall’s sentence goes to a Guardian article reporting on the US attack last month against Iranian-backed fighters in Syria which was widely viewed as retaliation for an Iranian sponsored attack on US-led forces in Iraq days earlier that killed a American contractor.  But, the article says nothing about Israel “urging” Biden to launch such attacks.

We contacted Guardian editors and asked that they either provide a credible source for Tisdall’s claim or, if they’re unable to do so, remove the reference to Israel ‘urging’ Washington to attack Iran.

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1 Comment

  1. says: Grimey

    The Trade Union’s Grauniad doesn’t use evidence for their attacks on Israel- it uses plain, old-fashioned lies to stoke up its institutionalised anti-Semitism.

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