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https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-october-1-2024/

QUESTION: And then both you and the National Security Advisor just a few minutes ago talked about this being a brazen and unacceptable escalation. But does the administration see anything that Israel has done over the course of the last three weeks as escalatory?

MR MILLER: So certainly they have done things to expand the conflict, but if you look at the actions that they have taken, they were bringing terrorists to justice, terrorists who have launched attacks on Israeli civilians. If you look at what Iran did today – we have been warning for some time about the threat posed by Iran arming and funding terrorist groups across the Middle East. And the attack today just demonstrated the danger of those actions. What you saw was Iran launching a state-on-state attack to protect and defend the terrorist groups that it has built, nurtured and that it controls. So there is a difference between the actions that we have seen Israel take to defend its civilians —

QUESTION: Okay, well I’m not suggesting that they’re —

MR MILLER: — and what we’ve – I just – and what we’ve seen Iran take.

QUESTION: I’m not trying to suggest that they are equivalent. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t see —

MR MILLER: No, you – we have certainly seen Iran – or – we’ve certainly seen Israel expand the nature of its attacks against Hizballah, but it is a very – it is a very different type of attack than what we saw today from a state – a state actor against another state.

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QUESTION: So given that the Secretary and the National Security Advisor just said that this attack by Iran is sort of definitively escalatory in nature. I know that State – you’ve been telling us, the Secretary even told us that for months they’ve – you’ve been encouraging the Israelis not to respond to attacks and provocations in such a way that escalates anything further. Are – is the Secretary going to offer that same advice to the Israelis now in the wake of these missile strikes?

MR MILLER: I’ll say a couple things about that. First, of course Israel has a right to defend itself, as any nation does. In terms of what Israel’s response will be, of course there must be consequences for Iran for this attack. We’ve made clear that there must be consequences. I’m not going to get into what those consequences are today.

But there are things on which we will be coordinating with our Israeli counterparts, and I think in the immediate aftermath of this attack we are going to coordinate with them on what any response might be. I think it’s important that we are able to defeat this attack through successful work with Israel and with our partners, and we will work with them on what a response might look like. But I’m not at the position, just two and a half hours after this event occurred, to offer what that might look like today.

QUESTION: The Iranian foreign ministry people have said that – now that they gave the U.S. – I don’t who – a head’s up in advance of these missile strikes today through diplomatic channels. Is that true?

MR MILLER: That is absolutely false. We had no kind of warning from the Government of Iran that they were going to launch such an attack. Yeah.