April 14, 2024
Tehran has vowed
an attack ‘ten times’ greater if Israel chooses to escalate
The Israeli army
confirmed that one of its bases was damaged in the Iranian drone and missile
attack on Israel on 14 April.
“Some damage has
been recorded, including at a military base in the south of the country,”
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said, adding that minor damage was
inflicted on the base and that one girl in the Negev region was injured by
shrapnel.
Iranian media
confirmed Tehran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel’s Nevatim air base in the
southern Negev desert. The ballistic missiles were launched by the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, in coordination with other
units of Iran’s army.
Video footage
across social media shows numerous Iranian missiles raining down on the Nevatim
base.
Iranian forces
had carried out missile drills in February last year, simulating an attack on
this particular Israeli military facility. The Nevatim air base, 1,100
kilometers from Iranian territory, houses the latest F-35 warplanes. The
facility has an airport and three runways.
Tehran said
several other sites and targets were struck in the attack, which was dubbed
“Operation True Promise” and included the use of hundreds of drones and
missiles.
The Iranian
strikes were a response to the Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in
Damascus on 1 April, which destroyed the entire building and killed several top
officials and advisors, including Brigadier General Mohamed Reza Zahidi of the
IRGC Quds Force. The attack was an unprecedented violation of international
law’s protection for diplomatic missions.
“The mission has
been accomplished and has obtained the desirable results,” the Iranian army’s
Chief of Staff, Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, said on Sunday morning.
“A considerable
number of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles have been used in this
operation with well-thought-out tactics and proper planning … Although Iran has
no intention of continuing the operation, the Zionist regime must bear in mind
that any action against Iran, either on the Iranian soil or against centers
belonging to Iran in Syria or any other country, will trigger a new and more
immense operation,” he added.
He also
confirmed that Tehran is capable of an attack “tens of times” greater and that
US bases will be struck if Washington chooses to cooperate in any Israeli
response.
John Wight
The Islamic Republic has been
confronted with the most important challenge it has faced since Saddam Hussein
mounted his invasion of the country in 1980, writes John Wight.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is that
rare entity among the family of nations, in that it is both a regressive and
progressive force at the same time. In other words a state in which a
reactionary and revolutionary impulse occupies the same political and geopolitical
space.
The Islamic Republic was
established, it should be pointed out, on the back not of a revolution but a
counter-revolution.
The actual Iranian Revolution of
1979 was waged and won by a popular front consisting of Islamists, communists,
trade unionists, nationalists and adherents of various other political and
ideological currents.
Upon the Shah’s overthrow the
Islamists, at the direction of the Ayotollah Khomeini, promptly turned against
and ruthlessly purged their erstwhile allies in the name not of justice but
power.
Since then the country has trod an
uneasy path between reaction at home and revolution abroad, forging a
schizophrenic identity at once incompatible with modernity but also a committed
disciple of it.
In this respect, the Islamic
Republic bears comparison with the 1868–1912 Meji Restoration in Japan, which
sought to combine Japanese cultural traditions with Western modernisation in a
process that led directly to the rise of Japanese imperialism as an antidote to
Western imperialism.
In the here and now, the Islamic
Republic has existed in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism ever since the
Shah’s overthrow in ’79, and with good reason. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime
was a major plank of U.S. geostrategic power in the Middle East, a veritable
American aircraft carrier and market for U.S. capital investment.
Along with Saudi Arabia and Israel,
Iran under his rule was a vital Cold War asset and its loss a serious blow to
U.S. prestige and global hegemony at the time.
But let us not be deceived by any
insincere statements of concern emanating from Washington and other Western
capitals for the plight of the Iranian people under a supposedly evermore
authoritarian regime in Tehran.
The Islamic Republic’s pariah status
in the West is entirely down to the fact that under the mullahs, Iran has dared
to assert its sovereign right to an independent foreign policy and has set its
face against the U.S.-led Western imperialism in the region and beyond.
In this regard, Tehran has been
crucial to the ability of President Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, Lebanon and the
Palestinians to continue to resist the determined attempt to subvert all in the
name of Israeli military domination of the region in the cause of expansionism.
But now, in the wake of the brazen
Israeli airstrike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, responsible for
the deaths of senior IRCG commanders, the Islamic Republic has been confronted
with the most important challenge it has faced since Saddam Hussein mounted his
invasion of the country in 1980.
Respond directly to the recent
Israeli missile strike, as it has both the legitimate and moral right to — and
also perhaps the need to militarily — and Tehran faces the prospect of direct
military confrontation not only with Israel but also with the U.S.
Fail to respond and the Islamic
Republic risks being exposed as a paper tiger. And this not only in the eyes of
its Zionist and U.S. adversaries, but also perhaps even more crucially in the
eyes of its allies.
[Iran fired about 300 drones and
missiles at Israel early Sunday local time. No one was killed. Iran said the
matter was over, but Israel said it would respond. Biden told Netanyahu the
U.S. “will not join an offensive counter-strike on Iran should Israel choose
that road after Tehran attacked it this weekend, according to two people
familiar with the conversation,” Politico reported.]
Ironically, both Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar
and Israel’s Netanyahu have had the same vested interest in dragging Iran into
a wider regional conflict since Oct. 7 was launched.
Up to now the Iranians have
judiciously navigated what has been an incredibly dangerous ecosystem on the
back of the Hamas-led military operation.
Further still, that the Sinwar
leadership in Gaza chose neither to inform the Iranians nor the leadership of
Hezbollah in Lebanon prior to staging the Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel
remains revelatory as to the character of the so-called Axis of Resistance.
During a face-to -face meeting
between Hamas’ leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, and Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in November 2023, the latter is reported to have
informed Haniyeh that Iran would not enter the war directly, having received no
prior warning of Oct. 7.
This posture on the part of the
Iranians could now well change in the wake of Israel’s attack on its consulate
in Damascus.
Here, the timing of the Israeli
strike is telling in the extreme, coming as it did just days after the Joe
Biden-Benjamin Netanyahu phone call during which the U.S. president reportedly
laid down the law to the Israeli prime minister after an Israeli drone strike
killed seven aid workers, six of them citizens of U.S. Western- allied
countries.
In other words, was the Israeli
airstrike on Iranian sovereign diplomatic territory in Damascus Netanyahu’s
direct and withering riposte to a Biden administration that had “dared” to
become overtly vocal in its criticism of the way the Israeli Defense Forces has
been conducting its offensive in Gaza? The answer would seem to be implicit in
the question.
What is unfolding now is a high
stakes game of chess between both allies and adversaries. With this in mind,
Biden’s “ironclad” guarantee of an American response should Iran mount an
attack on Israel, which he announced immediately after Israel’s airstrike, has
to all intents confirmed that Netanyahu has succeeded in snapping Biden back
into line.
In so doing, Netanyahu has deftly
weaponised a U.S. presidential election year in which a resurgent Donald Trump
is hovering in the background as a putative hawkish alternative.
For the Iranian leadership in
Tehran, meanwhile, the law of unintended consequences will be being heavily
weighed when it comes to any response to Israel’s recent airstrike. How can the
current regime be confident of mass support at home for direct military
confrontation with Israel, much less the Americans too?
The brief but militant “Hijab
Protest” in the summer of 2022 exposed fissures within Iranian society that
remain extant if hidden for now. The risk of those social fissures being rent
asunder again is a stark one, going forward.
Not that Israeli society is
currently an exemplar of social cohesion in comparison. Netanyahu’s fascistic
coalition is well aware of the deep and deepening detestation with which it is
viewed by a significant proportion of its own people. This after six months of
unrelenting military assault that has failed to achieve the destruction of
Hamas and/or the release of the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza.
Escalation under these
circumstances, and at this juncture, is imperative for Netanyahu and the last
thing the Iranians need. The result is a chessboard upon which the future of
the entire region, and by extension global stability, is currently being played
out with just one move all it will take.
Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) –
Despite all the hype about Iran’s largely symbolic barrage of over 200 drones
and cruise and ballistic missiles, unleashed on the thinly populated Negev
Desert (where it was mainly Palestinian Bedouin who were put in danger), the
military significance of this action was minimal. An Israeli base was hit at
Dimona, which houses the country’s nuclear warheads, but the government said
that the damage was minimal. Almost all of the projectiles were shot down, by
the Jordanian and Israeli and American Air Forces, or by anti-missile missiles.
The only casualty appears to be a 7-year-old Palestinian Bedouin girl, who was
seriously injured by a falling missile.
Iran struck because Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on April 1 had the consular annex of the Iranian
embassy in Damascus bombed, killing high-ranking Iranian officials, including
Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and seven other officers of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Coprs (IRGC). Those officials were there at the invitation
of the Syrian government, and embassies are protected from military attack by
the Vienna Convention.
Iran cited Article 51 of the United
Nations Charter for its counter-strike on Israel, which guarantees states the
right of self-defense. Embassies are considered national soil.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s
clerical Leader, had said Wednesday at his Eid al-Fitr sermon: “The consulate
and embassy institutions in any country are the soil of that country. The evil
regime made a mistake and must be punished and will be punished.” He added,
“The events in Gaza showed the evil nature of Western civilization to the
world. They killed thirty-odd thousand defenseless people; aren’t these human?
Do they not have rights?” He also said, “They showed what kind of civilization
this is. A child is killed, in the mother’s arms. The patient dies in the
hospital. Their power cannot touch … the men of the resistance; so they target
the lives of family members, the lives of children and the oppressed, the lives
of old men.”
Iran’s permanent mission to the
United Nations in New York wrote on X,
“Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to
legitimate defense, 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, should the Israeli regime make another mistake,
Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran
and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!”
Tehran is saying that with this
exchange, “the matter can be deemed concluded.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not
looking for an all-out war.
It was not only the strike on the
Iranian embassy that set the stage for Iran’s barrage, but also the six months
of intensive Israeli bombing of the Palestinians of Gaza, in which the vast
majority of those killed were innocent noncombatants, with 70% being women and
children and many others noncombatant men. The death toll now stands at 33,686
Palestinians. Only a small clique of militants committed the horrific October 7
attack on Israel, without telling anyone else what they were planning. There is
no military or other justification for using an artificial intelligence program
to identify all members of Hamas’s paramilitary (some of which is the
equivalent of a neighborhood watch for local security) and to murder them from
the skies along with their spouses, children, extended families, and neighbors.
Iran is pledged to defend the
Palestinians and has been made to look ineffectual and foolish by the ongoing
Israeli atrocities, which have set the blood of the publics in the Middle East
to boiling and much raised the esteem in which they hold Iran. The embassy
strike was the last straw. If Iran did not reply to it at least symbolically,
its credibility, and any deterrence it was perceived to have, became a joke.
Netanyahu for his part was
attempting to provoke Iran, in the hope that Tehran would take the bait. He
knew that even Washington had come to see Israel as the aggressor in Gaza, and
that he was losing support in Congress. He knew that if the issue became an
Iranian attack on Israel, the Western capitals would all rally around him and
forgive him at least for a while for having brought the Israeli equivalent of
Neo-Nazis into his cabinet and then gone Amalek on tens of thousands of
innocent Palestinians.
In the end, Khamenei and the
Revolutionary Guards let their devotion to the late Gen. Zahedi sway their
emotions and they fell for Netanyahu’s trick.
Earlier on Saturday the naval
section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps boarded and confiscated a
container ship in the Gulf of Oman that belongs to the company of one of
Netanyahu’s billionaire backers. While this action violated the law of the sea
and can’t be condoned, it was a wiser way of replying to the embassy attack
than sending missiles against Israel. It hit Netanyahu where it hurts and no
one would have cared about it in the outside world.
Now, we have to suffer with
Netanyahu proclaiming his victimhood (he started it) and suffering through
statements of solidarity with his fascist government in the face of the
ayatollahs, with the ongoing genocide in Gaza cast into the shade.
As many observers are pointing out,
this very dangerous situation was caused by President Joe Biden’s mishandling
of the Gaza crisis. He should have cut Netanyahu off at the knees by January 1,
once it became clear that the Israelis were implementing their notorious Amalek
imperative, which implied genocide. By vetoing 3 United Nations Security
Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire and by undercutting the only one he
allowed to pass by branding it nonbinding, Biden let the butchery continue
apace. It continued the past week, during which Israel continued to bomb the
bejesus out of Gaza, to kill hundreds of innocents, and to starve them (despite
phony pledges to let more aid in, on which Netanyahu did not follow through.)
Biden, UK PM Rishi Sunak and other
leaders could also have defused the deliberate provocation of Iran by Netanyahu
by simply condemning the embassy attack of April 1 and defending the Vienna
convention. Again, the Iranian mission to the UN said this plainly:
“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible
act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently
brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this
rogue regime might have been obviated.”
Instead, Biden and his allies
declined to condemn Netanyahu’s action, continuing the North Atlantic
insouciance toward Israeli war crimes and continuing the implementation of
their double standard whereby International Humanitarian Law applies only to white
people. That is, there is not as much difference between Trumpian white
nationalism and Biden’s foreign policy as it might seem on the surface, though
Trump is of course far worse.
Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
Casualties
- 33,686 + killed* and at least 76,309 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 462+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
- 604 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 6,800 injured.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed
this figure on its Telegram channel on April 13, 2024. Some rights groups
estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed
dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank
and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of
Health on April 5, this is the latest figure.
*** This figure is released by the
Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be
published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded is according to Israeli
media reports.
Key Developments
- Iran launches an estimated 250-300 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles towards Israel in retaliation for the Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1 that killed a number of senior Iranian generals.
- Israel, with the help of the U.S., UK, France, and Jordan, shoots down the “majority” of the drones and missiles fired by Iran, according to the Israeli military
- Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari: “A number of Iranian missiles fell inside Israeli territory, causing minor damage to a military base with no casualties. Only one little girl has been hurt, and we hope she will be well.”
- Iran sends letter to the UN, saying its drone strikes on Israel were an exercise of Iran’s “inherent right to self-defense” in response to Israel’s attack on the consulate, citing Article 51 of the UN Charter
- UN Security Council set to hold emergency meeting on Sunday, April 14, upon request from Israel’s UN envoy
- U.S. President Joe Biden reaffirms “ironclad” support for Israel, while reportedly advocating behind the scenes for de-escalation. Prior to Saturday, Biden had not rebuked Israel for the attack on the Iranian consulate, despite weeks of Iran threatening to retaliate.
- Hezbollah launches missiles towards an army base in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
- Ansar Allah (commonly referred to as the “Houthis”), launch simultaneous unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, towards Israel in accordance with Iranian strikes, Al Jazeera reported.
- Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon temporarily closed their respective airspaces ahead of the Iranian attack.
- Around 50 Palestinians injured and at least two killed since Friday in Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli forces shoot and kill at least an additional two Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, bringing the total number of Palestinians Israel killed in the West Bank over the weekend to at least four.
- Israeli settlers launched a massive assault on the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah, that extended from Friday into Saturday, with settlers killing one Palestinian, burning 12 Palestinian homes and several cars in the village.
- Israeli settlers burn down 15 Palestinian homes and 10 farms in the Nablus-area village of Duma.
- One Israeli settler teen found dead in the occupied West Bank, with Israeli media reporting that his body was “discovered by a drone.”
Iran says retaliation ‘concluded,’
warns Israel against counterattack
On Saturday night, Iran launched its
retaliatory strike on Israel for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in
Damascus on April 1, which killed two senior Iranian generals and ten others.
Tensions had been rising in the week preceding Iran’s eventual attack, as both
Israel and Iran exchanged threats and conducted maneuvers in preparation for
the escalation. However, Reuters had reported on Thursday that Iran’s foreign
minister, Hussein Amir Abdellahian, informed Washington during a visit to Oman
that Iran would conduct its response in a way that “avoids escalation,” and
that another U.S. intelligence source said “Iran was very clear” that its
retaliatory strike would be “under control.”
As of the time of writing, Iran’s
response has largely adhered to these statements. It launched between 250 to
300 drones in addition to ballistic and cruise missiles, “99%” of which were
intercepted, according to Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who said
that the Iranian attack had “failed.” Regional and international allies of
Israel participated in downing and intercepting the aerial attacks, including
the U.S., the UK, France, and Jordan.
The hundreds of drones and missiles
could be seen in the skies above occupied Palestine and Israeli cities and
settlements in the early morning hours of Sunday, which were intercepted by
Israel’s air defense systems.
Videos on social media showed
Israeli air defenses intercepting Iranian missiles in Jerusalem above Israel’s
parliament, the Knesset, while other videos showed interceptions taking place
in the skies of the occupied West Bank.
By 1 a.m. local time, the attack had
concluded without incident.
While U.S. President Biden said that
he condemned Iran’s attacks “in the strongest possible terms” and hailed
Israel’s “remarkable capacity” to defeat “unprecedented attacks,” it is clear
from previous Iranian statements that the intention of the Iranian retaliatory
response was to remain contained and not offer Israel a pretext to widen the
war.
This was further underscored by the
statement of Iran’s Mission to the UN at 1:06 a.m. shortly after the attack,
which asserted that Iran’s retaliation can now “be deemed concluded.”
“However, should the Israeli regime
make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a
conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. must
stay away,” the statement added.
Reuters reported that the Chief of
Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Major General Muhammad Bagheri, had told Iranian
state TV that “our operations are over and we have no intention to continue
them,” indicating that Iran would for now remain satisfied with having
“successfully targeted” two Israeli military bases.
For his part, President Biden told
Netanyahu over a phone call that the U.S. would not support any Israeli
counterattack, a senior official in the White House told Axios.
According to the White House
official, Biden told Netanyahu to “take the win,” apparently signaling to
Israel that further retaliations that might lead to a regional war would not be
viewed favorably by the U.S.
The ball, therefore, remains firmly
within Israel’s court regarding whether current hostilities might escalate into
a regional war.
Israeli settlers rampage across the
West Bank, committing arson and murder
An Israeli settler teenager from an
illegal outpost in the West Bank was found dead on Friday just after settlers
began to rampage through the village of al-Mughayyir northeast of Ramallah, in
addition to the surrounding villages.
One 26-year-old Palestinian man was
shot and killed in al-Mughayyir on Friday, and at least 25 others were injured.
The Palestinian martyr was identified as Jehad Abu Alia. It remains unclear
whether he was killed by an Israeli soldier or settler gunfire. On Saturday,
Israeli troops obstructed the movement of the ambulance carrying Abu Alia’s
body for the funeral.
On the same day, settlers returned
to al-Mughayyir and went on a rampage, setting over a dozen homes and cars on
fire and firing live ammunition at people. At least six villagers were wounded,
including one with a critical head injury.
Settlers also attacked other
surrounding villages, including Duma, Beit Furik, and Qusra. Several
Palestinians were injured with gunfire and dozens of homes were set on fire in
Duma. According to Wafa, Israeli forces seized two houses in the town and turned
them into field investigation centers, with forces searching several houses as
settlers simultaneously attacked the village.
Later, on Saturday night, Israeli
settlers attacked additional Palestinian villages, including the Palestinian
town of Beitin outside of Ramallah and al-Bireh, where settlers killed a
17-year-old Palestinian boy, according to Wafa news agency. Armed Israeli
settlers also raid the town of Sinjil, injuring 2 people with live fire.
In the Nablus area in the northern
West Bank, settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles traveling on the roads around
the city. At least one Palestinian was injured on a Nablus road by settlers
throwing rocks.
Settlers also attacked the Ein al
Hilweh area in the Jordan Valley, a small hamlet in the Hebron governorate in
the southern West Bank, and areas around Qalqiliya, Salfit, al-Sawiya in the
northern West Bank.
At least two Palestinians have been
killed by the Israeli military since Friday during raids in the town of Tubas
and in al-Faraa refugee camp. The martyr of Tubas was claimed by Hamas as a
member of its military wing.
Ellen Ioanes
April 13, 2024
Iran had
threatened to respond to an assassination at its embassy, and did so Saturday,
sparking fears of a wider confrontation.
Iran launched a
retaliatory strike Saturday night on Israel for its deadly attack on Iranian
officers in the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Damascus after days of signaling
it would do so.
The response
came in waves throughout Saturday, beginning with the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) seizing a vessel in the Red Sea connected to Israeli
billionaire Eyal Ofer’s company, Zodiac Maritime. By around 11 pm local time,
that had graduated to multiple waves of attack drones and missiles headed
toward Israeli targets.
The drones —
thought to be slow-moving Shahed-136 models — could have been intended to
confuse Israeli radar systems and allow missiles to penetrate, but also could
have been chosen as a carefully choreographed response intended to telegraph
the regime’s anger at Israel’s embassy strike on April 1. The Israeli military
said the missile barrage included both ballistic and cruise missiles.
The last two
weeks and particularly Iran’s attack Saturday have raised fears that finally it
— as in, the outright regional war that has been feared ever since Hamas’s
October 7 attacks and Israel’s ensuing invasion of Gaza — is here.
And while it’s
too early to tell what exactly comes next — including how Israel responds —
Iran seems to be signaling it doesn’t want this to escalate further.
For one, the
country is in no position to ignite a regional war because of its internal
economic and security instability and regime vulnerability. But, after years of
US and Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and military
commanders, the regime likely calculated that it had no choice but to respond
to the Damascus strike.
But an hour
after the drone strike, Iran’s permanent mission to the UN wrote on X, formerly
Twitter, that, “The matter can be deemed concluded.”
Here’s what we
know so far
The attack
Saturday was an alarming escalation in the long-running tensions between Iran
and Israel. Iran has said that it has launched dozens of drones; Israeli
military sources said more than 100, according to the Associated Press.
Because it took
the drones hours to reach Israeli airspace, US, Israeli, and Jordanian forces
were prepared to intercept the aircraft (Jordan and several other neighboring
countries shut down their airspace Saturday night).
At the time of
this writing, according to Reuters, the US has shot down an undisclosed number
of the drones, and Ha’aretz reported that the ballistic missile phase of Iran’s
attack had finished.
The US has vowed
steadfast support in case of an Iranian attack on Israeli territory, increasing
the number of US forces and assets in the region to prepare for such a
situation, and the UK has supported the US’s efforts in the region as well.
The drones were
reportedly headed to the Golan Heights, a region that Israel captured from
Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the Negev desert, where there are several
Israeli military installations and a US base. Israel’s primary nuclear research
center and one of its largest air bases are both located in the Golan Heights.
Both Israeli and
Iranian governments confirmed that Iran had also launched cruise missiles
toward Israeli targets, synchronized to hit at the same time the drone swarms
reached Israeli airspace.
Israel’s air
raid alert system sounded warnings across areas of southern Israel including
the Negev, as well as the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights,
indicating that the Iranian weapons were headed toward their targets. Israeli
missile defense systems reportedly intercepted many of them.
One person has
been reported to be injured so far, according to Israel’s emergency services,
and minor damage was caused to an Israeli military base, according to
spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
Does this mean a
regional war is imminent?
A major concern
over the past six months of Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas
attacks has been whether it will spill into a regional war.
Iran’s rhetoric
in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been fiery, but until now, the
Islamic Republic — which considers Israel an interloper in Muslim lands — has
been content to let affiliated groups, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and militias
in Iraq and Syria, fight those battles. Hezbollah and Israel frequently trade
fire over the southern Lebanese border, which has killed at least 66 Lebanese
civilians and approximately nine Israeli civilians, and Iraqi and Syrian
militia groups have attacked US installations in both those countries over 150
times in the past six months in response to the US’s continued military support
for Israel.
Early on in the
war, the US sent warships to the region to discourage further escalation.
Yemen’s Houthi
rebel group has also targeted ships in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait of the Red Sea,
claiming to target vessels in retaliation for the Israeli military’s
destruction of Gaza and killing of more than 33,000 Palestinians. (Though, as
my colleague Joshua Keating has reported, the attacks also serve a number of
the Houthis’ other interests.)
Then, on April
1, Israel launched an attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing
multiple IRGC Quds Force commanders, who manage operations for Iran-aligned
forces around the region. Embassies are considered to be inviolable, and
serious attacks on such premises are rare.
Though the
Islamic Republic can ill afford an all-out regional war, “they were compelled
to do this,” Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran
program, told Vox.
Internal
dynamics, including an economy crippled by inflation, sanctions, and
corruption; widespread dissatisfaction with the regime exemplified by the
large-scale protest movement after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini; and
internal security crises due to the rise of ISIS-Khorasan Province and Baluch
separatist groups make war with Israel and the US deeply unappealing for the
regime. But for days after the attack on its Damascus embassy, Iran was
promising to respond.
“The Iranians
concluded that the risk of not responding outweighed the risk of responding,”
Vaez said. Hardliners within the government — the leadership’s last remaining
sector of support — had publicly criticized the lack of response to multiple
assassinations and escalatory actions attributed to Israel.
Thus far there
have been no reports of Israeli deaths. But whether and how Israel will respond
remains to be seen.
RT
Iranian
commandos have stormed an Israeli-operated container ship in the Persian Gulf
and taken control of the vessel. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned
the “pirate operation” and called on the West to impose sanctions on Tehran.
The
MSC Aries was boarded by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy troops
as it transited the Strait of Hormuz around noon on Saturday. Once under the
IRGC’s control, it was taken to Iranian territorial waters, Iranian state media
reported.
Video
footage shared online showed IRGC commandos rappelling onto the deck of the
ship from a helicopter.
The
Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries is operated by Zodiac Maritime, a shipping firm
owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer. At the time of the seizure, it was
sailing past the Emirati port of Fujairah with its transponder switched off,
the Associated Press reported. With Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz and
Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacking Israeli shipping interests in the Red Sea, it
is standard practice for Israeli-linked vessels to disable their tracking data
when sailing in the region.
Since
2019, Iran has periodically seized Israeli and Western vessels in the Strait of
Hormuz during times of increased tension. Tehran typically offers legal
justification for these seizures, but gave no such explanation on Saturday.
However,
Saturday’s seizure came two weeks after an alleged Israeli airstrike on an
Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The strike killed seven
officers of the IRGC’s Quds Force, including two generals.
Iranian
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to deal Israel a “slap in the face”
in response, and American officials warned on Friday that Tehran could be
gearing up for a massive drone and missile strike on Israeli soil over the
weekend. It is unclear whether Iran plans further attacks after seizing the MSC
Aries.
Israeli
Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned the seizure, accusing Khamenei’s
“criminal regime” of “conducting a pirate operation in violation of
international law.”
“I
call on the European Union and the free world to immediately declare the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards corps as a terrorist organization and to sanction
Iran now,” he wrote on X.
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