Iran said it launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles towards Israel on Saturday in a major attack following days of acute tension building up in the region and warnings from the US and elsewhere about a wider conflict erupting.
Air attack warning sirens began wailing over Jerusalem just before 2am local time on Sunday after the weapons were fired a few hours earlier from Iran with US and Jordanian military assisting Israel’s air defenses in intercepting the first incoming barrage.
With weapons believed to be still in the air en route to Israel, Iran’s mission to the United Nations posted on X: “Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded.”
However, it threatened more severe action in the face of further Israeli aggression and warned the US and Jordan specifically not to assist Israel.
Edit: here are links to the NYT and BBC live feeds.
Edit 2: updated summary and archive to reflect article changes.
Yes, it does, and it sucks. It’s basically war over there. That said, attacking an embassy is a line where Israel’s actions should have been condemned. The point is not that Iran is in the right in any way, the point is Israel is just as wrong here.
Iran’s response isn’t proportional though. Israel made a single strike on military leaders using a nearby embassy. Launching dozens of drones is an escalation.
It’s not even a smart escalation. It allows Israel to claim they were attacked disproportionately and launch strikes on Iran’s actual military in country. Iran has much worse defenses against cruise missiles and drones. Now they may lose what sympathy they had from other countries.
I predict the US will free the ship Iran took today within a few weeks. Maybe the Navy will knock out all Iran’s anti-air radar in the south, just as a show of force, and then not attack anything. That would be a good way to tell them to stop without killing.
The US just tried to negotiate with Houthis over the attacks in the Red Sea, an
omissionadmission that things aren’t going so well. Iran is in a stronger position than Houthis, I think your over estimating the US right now.Well the whole premise is that the US is trying to play middle ground seacop (shittily). Obviously if they wanted to they could delete the existing houthi command/regime. (And thereby creating Arab quagmire new, electric boogalo)
Have you already forgot Afghanistan?!
Do you need to be reminded how well the US “deleted” the Taliban Poshtun leadership?
Because the Houtis in Yemen is a very similar situation, even to the point of the Houtis also being a mountain people, and they’ve already been enduring American and British bombs delivered by Saudi planes for years now.
The reason the US and Britain, after an initial couple of days of heavy and loud chest pounding, very quickly went very quiet about their attacks on the Houtis following the latter’s attack on shipping, is because it just wasn’t working all that well.
America’s ability to militarilly bully a group into compliance with American wishes relies on the targets being city people, who are pinned down and own shit they don’t want to lose, and doesn’t frigging work on mountain nomads.