Biden says no public negotiation on Israel's stance on Iranian oil sites

US President Joe Biden has said he will not negotiate in public when asked if he had urged Israel not to attack Iran's oil facilities.

"I don't negotiate in public," Biden told reporters on Thursday when asked if he was telling Israel not to attack Iran's oil facilities.

Asked if he was worried an Israeli strike on Iran's oil facilities would raise oil prices, he said, "If a hurricane hits, prices are going to go up. I don't know; who knows."

Biden was also asked why he had not spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days. He replied: "Because there's no action going on right now."

Israel has been weighing options to respond to Tehran's ballistic missile attack on Tuesday that Tehran says were in retaliation to back-to-back Israeli assassinations of Iranian, Hamas and Hezbollah officials.

Israel recently killed ex-Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian military official in Beirut strikes, months after assassinating Hamas chief peace negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

While Haniyeh was a political figure and was engaged in talks over Gaza war ceasefire that Biden had proposed, Nasrallah, according to Lebanon, had consented to ceasefire before he was killed by Tel Aviv. Beirut says it had informed US and France about Nasrallah's stance that immediately followed his assassination.

The US says it would work with Israel to make sure Iran faced severe consequences for its missile strikes on Israel.

Mounting tensions

Biden, earlier on Thursday, contributed to a surge in global oil prices when he said Washington was discussing strikes on Iran's oil facilities.

A US official later said Washington does not believe Israel has decided yet how to respond to Iran.

Biden on Wednesday said the US did not support any Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites.

After Israel laid waste on besieged Gaza and continued its aggression in Lebanon, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday.

Tehran warned that if Israel responds to the attack, it will face more "crushing attacks."

The attack and Tel Aviv's announcement of retaliation have raised concerns that the region could be caught up in a wider war.

Biden late on Thursday said that "we can avoid" all-out war in the Middle East.

"I don't believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it," he told reporters at the White House when asked how confident he was that full-blown war in the region could be averted.

He added: "But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet."