Despite the White House voicing its opposition against Israel striking back at Iran, the Jewish state issued “limited” strikes early Friday.

Fox News Digital has confirmed there have been explosions in Isfahan province where Natanz is located, though it is not clear whether it has been hit.

A well-placed military source has told Fox that the strike was “limited.”

The news came after President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would not take part in a counter-offensive against Iran.

ISRAEL STRIKES SITE IN IRAN IN RETALIATION FOR WEEKEND ASSAULT: SOURCE

John Kirby, the White House’s top national security spokesperson, told ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday, April 14 that the United States will continue to help Israel defend itself, but does not want war with Iran.

Kirby said “our commitment is ironclad” to defending Israel and to “helping Israel defend itself,” after being asked if the U.S. would support retaliation. 

John Kirby, White House national security communications advisor, during a news conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 15, 2024. (Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Kirby doubled-down on the fact that Biden does not “seek” war with Iran.

“And as the president has said many times, we don’t seek a wider war in the region. We don’t seek a war with Iran. And I think I will leave it at that,” Kirby added.

ISRAEL’S ADVANCED MILITARY TECHNOLOGY ON FULL DISPLAY DURING IRAN’S ATTACK

“We don’t seek escalated tensions in the region. We don’t seek a wider conflict,” Kirby said.

Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder holds a press conference at the Pentagon on October 19, 2023 in Arlington, Virginia. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder echoed Kirby’s sentiments, sharing in a press briefing that the U.S. does “not want to see a wider regional war.”

“As I’ve highlighted, we do not seek escalation in the region, but we will not hesitate to defend Israel and protect our personnel,” he said during the question and answer segment of the briefing.

“Again, we do not want to see a wider regional war,” he added. “We don’t seek conflict with Iran, but we won’t hesitate to take [the] necessary actions to protect our forces.”

Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile called Hayber (Hurremshahr-4) is seen after the launch during the promotional program organized with the participation of high-ranking military officials in Tehran, Iran on May 07, 2023.  (Iranian Defense Ministry/Hanodut/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Reports of Israel’s “limited strike” against Iran came following a retaliatory strike over the weekend. 

Iran attacked Israel over the weekend in retaliation for Israel’s deadly strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month that killed a dozen people, including a top general. 

The weekend attack by Iran marked a major escalation of violence. Despite decades of hostilities between the two nations, Iran has never directly attacked Israel, instead relying on proxy forces in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. 

Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.

The United States is once again opposing Palestinian efforts to gain full membership in the United Nations.

The U.S. vetoed a Palestinian membership application Thursday, ending the latest debate on the issue at the U.N. Security Council and again squashing Palestinian statehood aspirations, at least for now.

Despite U.S. opposition, there was overwhelming support on the 15-nation Security Council for the Palestinian bid. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the devastating war between Israel and the militant group Hamas in Gaza has only made the statehood goal more urgent.

The vote Thursday was 12 in favor of membership for Palestinians with one abstention plus the U.S. veto.

“Recent escalations make it even more important to support good-faith efforts to find lasting peace between Israel and a fully independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian state,” Guterres told the Security Council.

But the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said ahead of the expected vote that her country’s opposition has not changed.

“Our position is that the issue of full Palestinian membership is a decision that should be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians,” said her deputy, Robert Wood.

Here’s a deeper look at the background.

Why is the U.S. opposed?

The U.S. says allowing the Palestinians to become a full member of the U.N. would be tantamount to recognizing Palestine as an independent state.

The U.S. maintains that such an elevation of Palestinian status has to come as part of a treaty with Israel that enshrines the two-state solution: establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, complete with a raft of complicated security and territorial agreements.

The reality on the ground is nowhere near that.

Even before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, the right-wing government of Israel was expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank on land that Palestinians claim as theirs. Continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the scores of heavily guarded settlements, considered illegal under international law, have rendered a contiguous Palestinian state in the region impossible, critics say.

The war in the Gaza Strip has further complicated the equation because of the vast devastation of the coastal enclave — nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to Gaza health officials — and the reluctance many in the international community would have to seeing Hamas members in a Palestinian national government.

What do the Palestinians say?

For Palestinians, full U.N. membership is one more step in recognition of their long-standing vision of statehood, an ever-more-elusive goal since the 1948 establishment of Israel that led to the displacement of millions of Palestinians.

But the current nature of Palestinian leadership also leaves many questions unanswered. The West Bank, governed by the internationally recognized secular Palestinian Authority, is divided from the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas, an Islamic militancy considered by the U.S. and some European countries to be a terrorist organization.

President Biden and others have urged major reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which is itself deeply unpopular among Palestinians, who see it as corrupt and ineffective.

Palestinians do not have “a credible leadership … capable of leading it out of its current existential crisis,” Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center in Washington, said in a panel discussion Thursday.

Even if formation of a Palestinian state is practically impossible right now, granting U.N. membership would be a useful re-upping of the issue, said Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian politician and activist.

“A state under occupation would put Israel in a very awkward situation,” he said, speaking via live video feed from the West Bank.

What does Israel say?

Israel says granting a state of Palestine full membership rewards “terrorists.”

“Who is the council voting to ‘recognize’ and give full membership status to? Hamas in Gaza?” asked Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Such a move, he added in remarks to the Security Council, would harm any chance for future dialogue.”

Erdan also said the Palestinians do not meet four basic criteria for U.N. membership: a permanent population, defined territory, a government and the capacity to sustain relations with other countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his government adamantly oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.

What is the U.S. game plan?

For days, U.S. officials said they had hoped to avoid having to veto the petition and worked to delay a vote as long as possible. But that gambit failed. Washington is often left standing almost alone in shooting down any proposals seen as critical of Israel and favoring the Palestinians.

A rare exception came last month when the U.S. abstained to allow passage of a U.N. resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza that Israel opposed.

Weren’t Palestinians already given U.N. membership?

Not full membership.

In 2012, the Palestinians were granted permanent observer status at the U.N., which allows them to participate in proceedings but not vote.

Their flag flies along with those of other nations outside the main U.N. building but at a slight distance from the others.

Tensions flared in the House of Representatives on Thursday when a group of conservatives confronted Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., over his foreign aid plan, leading to another Republican trading barbs with the group of rebels.

A group of lawmakers that included Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and others could be seen huddled with Johnson on the House floor after morning votes. 

The discussion appeared to be interrupted a short while later when Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., confronted the group, and wound up in a particularly heated back-and-forth with Gaetz. Van Orden later told Fox News Digital that he called Gaetz “tubby” and dared the GOP rebels to trigger a vote for Johnson’s ouster – a threat he’s facing from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who were not in the group.

Gaetz later told reporters that the conversation with Johnson was “tense” and that they were expressing opposition to his $95 billion proposal of separate bills for aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific. 

‘DEFINITION OF INSANITY’: FRUSTRATED HOUSE REPUBLICANS BLAST GOP REBELS’ THREAT TO OUST JOHNSON

It comes as Johnson faces blowback from members on the right of his conference over the plan, which is roughly the same cost as the Senate’s combined Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan funding package passed earlier this year. 

“We don’t want to pass his bill. The only win we’ve got in the House of Representatives is blocking the Senate supplemental. If we’re going to throw in the towel on that, what are we doing here?” Gaetz asked.

A key difference in Johnson’s plan is having House members vote on each of the bills separately before sending them in a combined package to the Senate – in order to give lawmakers the opportunity to take a stand on each issue and separating the politically fraught matter of Ukraine.

But conservatives balked at the lack of U.S. border security provisions tied to the Ukraine bill. Indeed, a GOP lawmaker familiar with the confrontation on the House floor told Fox News Digital that they were pushing Johnson to consider options that include border policy rather than going forward with his planned Saturday foreign aid vote.

“I thought we were making some real headway, and then had a member walk up and just start name-calling and just getting in people’s faces,” the GOP lawmaker said.

JOHNSON LIKELY FORCED TO GET DEM HELP ON FOREIGN AID PLAN AS REPUBLICANS DECRY LACK OF BORDER MEASURES

Republican Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden came to Johnson’s defense during the back-and-forth. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

They were almost certainly referring to Van Orden, who later told Fox News Digital that he joined the fray because he noticed the speaker needed “a swim buddy,” a term for a teammate that Van Orden borrowed from his days in the Navy SEALs.

“Gaetz was speaking to the speaker in a matter that I just, I did not think it was appropriate,” Van Orden said. 

“They start calling me stupid – incredibly juvenile things. And so I said something along the lines of, ‘Kick rocks, tubby,’ to Matt … And the reason I did that is because Matt Gaetz is a bully. He just got up in my face, and I’m not gonna be intimidated by that guy.”

Van Orden is one of the many rank-and-file Republicans who have accused House Freedom Caucus members and their allies of hurting the conference with hardball tactics against their fellow GOP lawmakers.

He said he dared them to make good on threats to call a motion to vacate, a procedural maneuver that would trigger a vote on ousting the speaker.

MASSIE THREATENS TO OUST SPEAKER JOHNSON IF HE DOESN’T STEP DOWN OVER FOREIGN AID PLAN

Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said Van Orden is ‘not a particularly intelligent individual.’ (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

When asked about his confrontation with Van Orden later, Gaetz called it “very puzzling and concerning.”

“The only thing I gleaned from it is that Mr. Van Orden is not a particularly intelligent individual,” Gaetz said.

He added that his confidence in Johnson was “diminishing” over his actions on foreign aid.

Currently, a vote on those bills is expected Saturday evening. Another border security bill that Johnson put forward to ease GOP concerns was blown up on Thursday night before it could get to the House floor by conservatives who accused Johnson of putting it up as a messaging bill with no real momentum.