April
4, 2026
Peiman Salehi
Yet developments inside Iran point in a different direction.
Rather than triggering collapse, external pressure appears to be producing a form of internal consolidation socially, politically, and strategically that complicates expectations about the trajectory of the conflict.
From within Tehran, the most immediate observation is not breakdown, but continuity under strain. Daily life has not stopped. Shops remain open, people continue to work, and public spaces remain active, even as currency volatility and intermittent internet disruptions reshape daily routines. These disruptions are real, but they have not translated into visible societal disintegration. Instead, they have pushed people to adapt. Households are adjusting consumption patterns, work routines, and expectations about the near future. The system is not static it is recalibrating.
Equally notable is the absence of large-scale outward flight. In many conflict environments, early phases of escalation are accompanied by attempts to exit whether through migration, asylum-seeking, or capital flight. In this case, such patterns have remained limited. Reports from European institutions indicate no significant surge in Iranian asylum applications, while anecdotal evidence suggests that some members of the Iranian diaspora have considered returning, rather than leaving. This does not imply uniform support for the political system; rather, it reflects a shift in prioritization. Under external threat, political disagreement appears to be temporarily subordinated to a broader sense of national continuity.
Iran has seen something like this before.
During the Iran–Iraq War, participation in national defense cut across ideological and religious lines, involving not only the political base of the state but also minorities and groups otherwise marginal to the governing structure. The current moment reflects a similar dynamic: external pressure is reconfiguring the boundaries of political identity, shifting emphasis from internal divisions to collective endurance.
However, framing this solely as “national unity” risks oversimplification. What is emerging is not merely cohesion, but strategic adaptation at multiple levels. Socially, this adaptation is visible in how risk is managed in everyday life through precautionary economic behavior, altered communication practices, and an implicit acceptance of prolonged uncertainty. Politically, it is evident in the recalibration of expectations: rather than anticipating a rapid resolution, many appear to interpret the conflict as an extended process in which outcomes will be determined over time.
This temporal shift is mirrored in Iran’s military and strategic posture. Contrary to the expectation that Iran would front-load its capabilities in the early stages of escalation, its operational approach has been characterized by restraint in initial deployment combined with a gradual intensification strategy. Rather than exhausting high-end capabilities at the outset, Iran appears to have relied on lower-cost systems such as drones and short-range projectiles deployed in repeated waves. The objective of such an approach is not immediate decisive impact, but cumulative pressure.
This method aligns with a logic of attrition that extends beyond the battlefield. Repeated, lower-cost attacks can impose sustained demands on defensive systems, particularly when those systems rely on finite and expensive interceptors. Over time, this dynamic introduces an economic dimension to military engagement, where the cost asymmetry between offensive and defensive measures becomes increasingly relevant. In this context, the conflict is less about singular exchanges and more about the depletion of capacity across interconnected systems.
The Strait of Hormuz plays a central role in this broader strategy. Often discussed in abstract strategic terms, its significance in the current conflict has become operational rather than theoretical. Restrictions on maritime transit whether partial or selective have already introduced friction into global energy flows, contributing to price volatility and uncertainty. For Iran, this represents a form of leverage that operates simultaneously in economic and geopolitical domains, allowing the country to extend the impact of the conflict beyond immediate military engagements.
What seems to be emerging, then, is a layered strategy in which military actions, economic pressure points, and societal adaptation are interconnected. The conflict is not being waged solely through kinetic exchanges, but through the management of endurance both domestically and across the broader system in which Iran is embedded.
Early in the escalation, public statements from US leadership emphasized maximalist objectives, including the possibility of forcing a decisive outcome. Over time, however, the framing has evolved. Subsequent statements have focused more narrowly on specific constraints most notably limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities while acknowledging the complexity of achieving broader goals. This shift does not necessarily indicate a change in ultimate objectives, but it does suggest an adjustment in the perceived feasibility of different outcomes under current conditions.
Such adjustments reflect a deeper issue: the difficulty of translating external pressure into internal fragmentation within a system that is structured for resilience under constraint. If external actors operate on the assumption that increased pressure will linearly produce internal collapse, they risk misreading the adaptive capacity of the society they are engaging with. In the Iranian case, pressure appears to be reinforcing certain forms of internal alignment while simultaneously pushing strategic behavior toward longer time horizons.
For policymakers, this presents a challenge. Strategies premised on rapid destabilization may not only prove ineffective but could also generate countervailing dynamics that strengthen the very structures they seek to weaken. Understanding the distinction between internal dissent and external resistance becomes critical. A society can contain significant internal disagreements while still exhibiting cohesion in the face of perceived external threat. Failing to account for this distinction risks conflating political diversity with structural fragility.
The current conflict thus illustrates a broader point about contemporary warfare in interconnected systems. Outcomes are not determined solely by territorial control or immediate battlefield performance, but by the ability of actors to absorb pressure, manage resources, and shape the environment over time. In this context, Iran’s approach combining societal adaptation with a calibrated strategy of attrition suggests a model of engagement that prioritizes endurance over rapid escalation.
Rather than collapsing under pressure, the system is adjusting to it.
And in that adjustment lies the central strategic reality that external actors must contend with: the mechanisms designed to compel change may, under certain conditions, produce a different kind of stability.
Human Rights Watch confirmed three separate Iranian attacks involving cluster munitions that affected population centers in Israel, including two separate incidents that resulted in civilian deaths near Tel Aviv, two men in Yehud on March 9 and an older man and woman in Ramat Gan on March 18.
“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Israel pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” said Patrick Thompson, crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Cluster munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”
Cluster munitions are fired in rockets, missiles, and projectiles or dropped from aircraft. They typically disperse in the air, spreading dozens of explosive submunitions, or bomblets, indiscriminately over a large area. Many fail to explode on initial impact, leaving duds that can kill and maim, like landmines, for years or even decades, unless cleared and destroyed.
Human Rights Watch analyzed 50 videos and 5 photographs posted online of suspected cluster munition use by Iran between March 1 and 20, as well as 6 photographs of unexploded submunitions apparently located in Israel and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch also interviewed witnesses to suspected cluster munition attacks. Human Rights Watch wrote to the Iranian government on March 25 concerning the use of cluster munitions. No response had been received at the time of publication.
Since the United States and Israel launched their assault on Iran on February 28, Iranian forces have responded with drone and missile attacks against Israel, as well as other countries in the region, particularly in the Gulf. Media reports and the Israeli government said at least 16 civilians have been killed in Israel and 4 in the West Bank as a result of missile fire. Nine of the victims in Israel were killed in a single ballistic missile strike on the town of Beit Shemesh on March 1, including 3 children. As of March 27, the Iranian Red Crescent had reported 1,900 deaths in Iran since the start of the conflict.
Although Iran has not joined the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which comprehensively bans all production and use of these weapons, international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks. The widespread impact of submunitions across a populated area is indicative of attacks that cannot discriminate between civilians and combatants and may amount to war crimes. Unexploded submunitions pose continued danger to civilians long after attacks.
Iran is known to possess ballistic missiles capable of delivering submunitions. The Israeli military spokesperson accused Iran of using cluster munitions in a post on X on February 28, the first reported use of these weapons during the current hostilities. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify this claim, but on March 1, multiple sources began posting videos and photographs on social media of what appear to be cluster munitions dispersed by an Iranian ballistic missile. It is unclear if these images are from the same or separate attacks.
Human Rights Watch reviewed 30 similar videos showing descending ballistic missiles surrounded by numerous suspected submunitions falling toward the ground. These most likely show eight separate incidents between March 1 and 20. Most show ballistic missiles with between 21 and 25 objects falling along their paths. Two of the videos show at least 65 objects. Human Rights Watch could not corroborate where these videos were taken, but researchers could not find them posted online before March. There is no visible evidence in videos reviewed that suggest these missiles were intercepted. The Israeli military has reportedly said that it does not attempt to intercept cluster munitions to conserve interceptors.
The first incident involving cluster munitions that Human Rights Watch confirmed occurred in the city of Or Yehuda, in central Israel. On March 6, Emanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for the Times of Israel, posted CCTV footage on X showing a clearly identifiable submunition affecting a civilian area that Human Rights Watch geolocated to a commercial area in Or Yehuda. The video, timestamped March 4 at 2:38 p.m., shows a submunition hitting the middle of a wide, empty street, causing an explosion.
The second attack took place on March 9, killing the two men and injuring at least one other person. Human Rights Watch verified near simultaneous impacts in Or Yehuda, Yehud, Bat Yam and Holon, all nearby cities in the broader metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. This area is Israel’s most densely populated, accounting for up to 45 percent of its population. The apparent submunitions were likely from one ballistic missile, affecting sites up to 13 kilometers apart, demonstrating the inherently indiscriminate nature of these weapons.
The attack in Yehud killed two construction workers at a building site. A video posted to Telegram on March 9 just before midday and verified by Human Rights Watch, shows two bodies several meters apart, one in a pool of blood, at a construction site. A witness to the attack said: “I work here on the construction site where the men were killed. I was pulling [my car] onto the street, on my way to work, and the sirens came on, and I heard the explosion.”
An apparent submunition impact approximately five kilometers away, in Or Yehuda, severely injured a man at the same time. Human Rights Watch verified CCTV footage posted to Telegram and geolocated it to Or Yehuda that shows a suspected submunition detonating on a road between newly constructed apartment complexes and a pedestrian falling injured to the ground a few meters away.
At 11:30 a.m. on March 9, Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, posted on Telegram that it was responding to multiple incidents in central Israel that had caused serious casualties. Fabian, the reporter for The Times of Israel, reported that the impacts were caused by submunitions, quoting first responders.
Human Rights Watch analysis of the detonations and the damage to residential areas in Yehud, Or Yehuda, Bat Yam, and Holon also suggests the use of submunitions, which have a relatively small explosive payload and cause significantly less damage than medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which have high explosive payloads many times larger than a single submunition. The damage was also inconsistent with kinetic damage caused by falling debris.
In the third incident Human Rights Watch verified, suspected submunitions struck multiple locations between midnight and 1 a.m. on March 18. At 12:12 a.m., the Israeli military announced the detection of ballistic missile launches from Iran and at around 12:20 a.m., sirens began sounding throughout central Israel. From 12:22 a.m., multiple sources began posting videos on Telegram of suspected cluster munitions, with the captions saying they were falling over central Israel. Researchers could not determine the locations of these videos, as they were taken at night, but it appears that they were not posted online before March 18.
These videos were followed by reports on social media of impacts in Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva, and Ramat Gan, all within the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
Shortly after reports of strikes surfaced, Magen David Adom reported that a man and a woman had died of severe fragmentation injuries in Ramat Gan. Videos and photographs of the impact site verified by Human Rights Watch show damage to a three-story residential building. A top-floor apartment where the couple were killed sustained damage to at least one interior room and its façade, with only light structural damage to the rest of the building, including a collapsed awning. The apartment damage is consistent with a submunition, as a large unitary warhead from a ballistic missile would most likely have caused significantly more damage.
A witness in Ramat Gan said: “We were huddled inside our shelter––me, my mother, father, and brother––when suddenly, after the alarm, we heard an explosion. It sounded close. We opened the window, looked outside, and saw that the apartment across the street from us was hit. A [munition] went through the roof and hit two older people, in their 70s, before they had reached the shelter.”
Human Rights Watch confirmed near simultaneous impacts in Petah Tikva on March 18 that were also most likely caused by submunitions. A photograph geolocated by Human Rights Watch shows an impact crater next to an upturned vehicle consistent with the size and depth of craters in other videos of submunition impacts. A video verified by Human Rights Watch and time-stamped 12:21 a.m. on March 18, shows an explosion consistent with a submunition impact approximately 815 meters to the northeast.
On March 19, four Palestinian women were killed in the West Bank town of Beit Awa. The Israeli military asserted they were killed by a submunition, while the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that they were killed by shrapnel falling from a missile. Human Rights Watch has not been able to independently verify the type of munition that killed them. Palestinians in the West Bank are more vulnerable to missiles and falling interception fragments due to a lack of protective infrastructure such as warning sirens and bomb shelters.
Human Rights Watch also reviewed six photographs showing unexploded submunitions posted online between March 1 and 15, that reportedly struck Israel and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch could not establish the locations of these submunitions due to the lack of geographic detail in the photographs, but researchers could not find them online before March. These submunitions are consistent with munitions used by Iran during the 12-Day War in June 2025, and their use has not been documented in other conflicts.
Publicly available technical information on the exact weapons used in these strikes is limited. Iran has, however, previously published information on ballistic missiles that have the capability to dispense submunitions. Iranian media published information on the “Zelzal” ballistic missile, which can carry up to 30 unguided submunitions weighing 17 kilograms that resemble those identified by Human Rights Watch. The number of submunitions is also consistent with most videos of suspected submunition use reviewed by Human Rights Watch.
Following an apparent failed missile test in Iran in 2023, submunitions resembling those Human Rights Watch identified in Israel struck the city of Gorgan in northeastern Iran. These submunitions are equipped with a heat shield that protects them as they descend through the atmosphere, causing a glow visible in videos of their descent. Additionally, Iran is also known to possess multiple other ballistic missiles reportedly capable of delivering submunitions, including variants of the “Ghadr,” “Khorramshar,” and “Fateh” missiles.
“The Iranian government should immediately stop firing cluster munitions,” Thompson said. “These munitions are not only inherently indiscriminate at the time of use, but unexploded submunitions pose a risk long afterwards, until cleared or destroyed.”
Peiman Salehi
Tehran (Special to Informed
Comment; Feature) – In Tehran, the expected signs of wartime breakdown are
largely absent.
The conventional logic of war
tends to follow a simple assumption: sustained external pressure leads to
internal fracture. In the case of Iran, much of the prevailing analysis
particularly in Western policy circles has followed this line, suggesting that
military escalation combined with economic strain would deepen domestic
divisions and potentially destabilize the state.
Yet developments inside Iran point in a different direction.
Rather than triggering collapse, external pressure appears to be producing a form of internal consolidation socially, politically, and strategically that complicates expectations about the trajectory of the conflict.
From within Tehran, the most immediate observation is not breakdown, but continuity under strain. Daily life has not stopped. Shops remain open, people continue to work, and public spaces remain active, even as currency volatility and intermittent internet disruptions reshape daily routines. These disruptions are real, but they have not translated into visible societal disintegration. Instead, they have pushed people to adapt. Households are adjusting consumption patterns, work routines, and expectations about the near future. The system is not static it is recalibrating.
Equally notable is the absence of large-scale outward flight. In many conflict environments, early phases of escalation are accompanied by attempts to exit whether through migration, asylum-seeking, or capital flight. In this case, such patterns have remained limited. Reports from European institutions indicate no significant surge in Iranian asylum applications, while anecdotal evidence suggests that some members of the Iranian diaspora have considered returning, rather than leaving. This does not imply uniform support for the political system; rather, it reflects a shift in prioritization. Under external threat, political disagreement appears to be temporarily subordinated to a broader sense of national continuity.
Iran has seen something like this before.
During the Iran–Iraq War, participation in national defense cut across ideological and religious lines, involving not only the political base of the state but also minorities and groups otherwise marginal to the governing structure. The current moment reflects a similar dynamic: external pressure is reconfiguring the boundaries of political identity, shifting emphasis from internal divisions to collective endurance.
However, framing this solely as “national unity” risks oversimplification. What is emerging is not merely cohesion, but strategic adaptation at multiple levels. Socially, this adaptation is visible in how risk is managed in everyday life through precautionary economic behavior, altered communication practices, and an implicit acceptance of prolonged uncertainty. Politically, it is evident in the recalibration of expectations: rather than anticipating a rapid resolution, many appear to interpret the conflict as an extended process in which outcomes will be determined over time.
This temporal shift is mirrored in Iran’s military and strategic posture. Contrary to the expectation that Iran would front-load its capabilities in the early stages of escalation, its operational approach has been characterized by restraint in initial deployment combined with a gradual intensification strategy. Rather than exhausting high-end capabilities at the outset, Iran appears to have relied on lower-cost systems such as drones and short-range projectiles deployed in repeated waves. The objective of such an approach is not immediate decisive impact, but cumulative pressure.
This method aligns with a logic of attrition that extends beyond the battlefield. Repeated, lower-cost attacks can impose sustained demands on defensive systems, particularly when those systems rely on finite and expensive interceptors. Over time, this dynamic introduces an economic dimension to military engagement, where the cost asymmetry between offensive and defensive measures becomes increasingly relevant. In this context, the conflict is less about singular exchanges and more about the depletion of capacity across interconnected systems.
The Strait of Hormuz plays a central role in this broader strategy. Often discussed in abstract strategic terms, its significance in the current conflict has become operational rather than theoretical. Restrictions on maritime transit whether partial or selective have already introduced friction into global energy flows, contributing to price volatility and uncertainty. For Iran, this represents a form of leverage that operates simultaneously in economic and geopolitical domains, allowing the country to extend the impact of the conflict beyond immediate military engagements.
What seems to be emerging, then, is a layered strategy in which military actions, economic pressure points, and societal adaptation are interconnected. The conflict is not being waged solely through kinetic exchanges, but through the management of endurance both domestically and across the broader system in which Iran is embedded.
Early in the escalation, public statements from US leadership emphasized maximalist objectives, including the possibility of forcing a decisive outcome. Over time, however, the framing has evolved. Subsequent statements have focused more narrowly on specific constraints most notably limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities while acknowledging the complexity of achieving broader goals. This shift does not necessarily indicate a change in ultimate objectives, but it does suggest an adjustment in the perceived feasibility of different outcomes under current conditions.
Such adjustments reflect a deeper issue: the difficulty of translating external pressure into internal fragmentation within a system that is structured for resilience under constraint. If external actors operate on the assumption that increased pressure will linearly produce internal collapse, they risk misreading the adaptive capacity of the society they are engaging with. In the Iranian case, pressure appears to be reinforcing certain forms of internal alignment while simultaneously pushing strategic behavior toward longer time horizons.
For policymakers, this presents a challenge. Strategies premised on rapid destabilization may not only prove ineffective but could also generate countervailing dynamics that strengthen the very structures they seek to weaken. Understanding the distinction between internal dissent and external resistance becomes critical. A society can contain significant internal disagreements while still exhibiting cohesion in the face of perceived external threat. Failing to account for this distinction risks conflating political diversity with structural fragility.
The current conflict thus illustrates a broader point about contemporary warfare in interconnected systems. Outcomes are not determined solely by territorial control or immediate battlefield performance, but by the ability of actors to absorb pressure, manage resources, and shape the environment over time. In this context, Iran’s approach combining societal adaptation with a calibrated strategy of attrition suggests a model of engagement that prioritizes endurance over rapid escalation.
Rather than collapsing under pressure, the system is adjusting to it.
And in that adjustment lies the central strategic reality that external actors must contend with: the mechanisms designed to compel change may, under certain conditions, produce a different kind of stability.
Human Rights Watch
(Beirut,
March 30, 2026) – The Iranian government has repeatedly used inherently
indiscriminate cluster munitions delivered by ballistic missiles in attacks on
Israel since February 28, 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. At least four
civilians have been killed in the strikes, which violate the laws of war and
may amount to war crimes.Human Rights Watch confirmed three separate Iranian attacks involving cluster munitions that affected population centers in Israel, including two separate incidents that resulted in civilian deaths near Tel Aviv, two men in Yehud on March 9 and an older man and woman in Ramat Gan on March 18.
“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Israel pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” said Patrick Thompson, crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Cluster munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”
Cluster munitions are fired in rockets, missiles, and projectiles or dropped from aircraft. They typically disperse in the air, spreading dozens of explosive submunitions, or bomblets, indiscriminately over a large area. Many fail to explode on initial impact, leaving duds that can kill and maim, like landmines, for years or even decades, unless cleared and destroyed.
Human Rights Watch analyzed 50 videos and 5 photographs posted online of suspected cluster munition use by Iran between March 1 and 20, as well as 6 photographs of unexploded submunitions apparently located in Israel and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch also interviewed witnesses to suspected cluster munition attacks. Human Rights Watch wrote to the Iranian government on March 25 concerning the use of cluster munitions. No response had been received at the time of publication.
Since the United States and Israel launched their assault on Iran on February 28, Iranian forces have responded with drone and missile attacks against Israel, as well as other countries in the region, particularly in the Gulf. Media reports and the Israeli government said at least 16 civilians have been killed in Israel and 4 in the West Bank as a result of missile fire. Nine of the victims in Israel were killed in a single ballistic missile strike on the town of Beit Shemesh on March 1, including 3 children. As of March 27, the Iranian Red Crescent had reported 1,900 deaths in Iran since the start of the conflict.
Although Iran has not joined the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which comprehensively bans all production and use of these weapons, international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks. The widespread impact of submunitions across a populated area is indicative of attacks that cannot discriminate between civilians and combatants and may amount to war crimes. Unexploded submunitions pose continued danger to civilians long after attacks.
Iran is known to possess ballistic missiles capable of delivering submunitions. The Israeli military spokesperson accused Iran of using cluster munitions in a post on X on February 28, the first reported use of these weapons during the current hostilities. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify this claim, but on March 1, multiple sources began posting videos and photographs on social media of what appear to be cluster munitions dispersed by an Iranian ballistic missile. It is unclear if these images are from the same or separate attacks.
Human Rights Watch reviewed 30 similar videos showing descending ballistic missiles surrounded by numerous suspected submunitions falling toward the ground. These most likely show eight separate incidents between March 1 and 20. Most show ballistic missiles with between 21 and 25 objects falling along their paths. Two of the videos show at least 65 objects. Human Rights Watch could not corroborate where these videos were taken, but researchers could not find them posted online before March. There is no visible evidence in videos reviewed that suggest these missiles were intercepted. The Israeli military has reportedly said that it does not attempt to intercept cluster munitions to conserve interceptors.
The first incident involving cluster munitions that Human Rights Watch confirmed occurred in the city of Or Yehuda, in central Israel. On March 6, Emanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for the Times of Israel, posted CCTV footage on X showing a clearly identifiable submunition affecting a civilian area that Human Rights Watch geolocated to a commercial area in Or Yehuda. The video, timestamped March 4 at 2:38 p.m., shows a submunition hitting the middle of a wide, empty street, causing an explosion.
The second attack took place on March 9, killing the two men and injuring at least one other person. Human Rights Watch verified near simultaneous impacts in Or Yehuda, Yehud, Bat Yam and Holon, all nearby cities in the broader metropolitan area of Tel Aviv. This area is Israel’s most densely populated, accounting for up to 45 percent of its population. The apparent submunitions were likely from one ballistic missile, affecting sites up to 13 kilometers apart, demonstrating the inherently indiscriminate nature of these weapons.
The attack in Yehud killed two construction workers at a building site. A video posted to Telegram on March 9 just before midday and verified by Human Rights Watch, shows two bodies several meters apart, one in a pool of blood, at a construction site. A witness to the attack said: “I work here on the construction site where the men were killed. I was pulling [my car] onto the street, on my way to work, and the sirens came on, and I heard the explosion.”
An apparent submunition impact approximately five kilometers away, in Or Yehuda, severely injured a man at the same time. Human Rights Watch verified CCTV footage posted to Telegram and geolocated it to Or Yehuda that shows a suspected submunition detonating on a road between newly constructed apartment complexes and a pedestrian falling injured to the ground a few meters away.
At 11:30 a.m. on March 9, Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, posted on Telegram that it was responding to multiple incidents in central Israel that had caused serious casualties. Fabian, the reporter for The Times of Israel, reported that the impacts were caused by submunitions, quoting first responders.
Human Rights Watch analysis of the detonations and the damage to residential areas in Yehud, Or Yehuda, Bat Yam, and Holon also suggests the use of submunitions, which have a relatively small explosive payload and cause significantly less damage than medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which have high explosive payloads many times larger than a single submunition. The damage was also inconsistent with kinetic damage caused by falling debris.
In the third incident Human Rights Watch verified, suspected submunitions struck multiple locations between midnight and 1 a.m. on March 18. At 12:12 a.m., the Israeli military announced the detection of ballistic missile launches from Iran and at around 12:20 a.m., sirens began sounding throughout central Israel. From 12:22 a.m., multiple sources began posting videos on Telegram of suspected cluster munitions, with the captions saying they were falling over central Israel. Researchers could not determine the locations of these videos, as they were taken at night, but it appears that they were not posted online before March 18.
These videos were followed by reports on social media of impacts in Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva, and Ramat Gan, all within the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
Shortly after reports of strikes surfaced, Magen David Adom reported that a man and a woman had died of severe fragmentation injuries in Ramat Gan. Videos and photographs of the impact site verified by Human Rights Watch show damage to a three-story residential building. A top-floor apartment where the couple were killed sustained damage to at least one interior room and its façade, with only light structural damage to the rest of the building, including a collapsed awning. The apartment damage is consistent with a submunition, as a large unitary warhead from a ballistic missile would most likely have caused significantly more damage.
A witness in Ramat Gan said: “We were huddled inside our shelter––me, my mother, father, and brother––when suddenly, after the alarm, we heard an explosion. It sounded close. We opened the window, looked outside, and saw that the apartment across the street from us was hit. A [munition] went through the roof and hit two older people, in their 70s, before they had reached the shelter.”
Human Rights Watch confirmed near simultaneous impacts in Petah Tikva on March 18 that were also most likely caused by submunitions. A photograph geolocated by Human Rights Watch shows an impact crater next to an upturned vehicle consistent with the size and depth of craters in other videos of submunition impacts. A video verified by Human Rights Watch and time-stamped 12:21 a.m. on March 18, shows an explosion consistent with a submunition impact approximately 815 meters to the northeast.
On March 19, four Palestinian women were killed in the West Bank town of Beit Awa. The Israeli military asserted they were killed by a submunition, while the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that they were killed by shrapnel falling from a missile. Human Rights Watch has not been able to independently verify the type of munition that killed them. Palestinians in the West Bank are more vulnerable to missiles and falling interception fragments due to a lack of protective infrastructure such as warning sirens and bomb shelters.
Human Rights Watch also reviewed six photographs showing unexploded submunitions posted online between March 1 and 15, that reportedly struck Israel and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch could not establish the locations of these submunitions due to the lack of geographic detail in the photographs, but researchers could not find them online before March. These submunitions are consistent with munitions used by Iran during the 12-Day War in June 2025, and their use has not been documented in other conflicts.
Publicly available technical information on the exact weapons used in these strikes is limited. Iran has, however, previously published information on ballistic missiles that have the capability to dispense submunitions. Iranian media published information on the “Zelzal” ballistic missile, which can carry up to 30 unguided submunitions weighing 17 kilograms that resemble those identified by Human Rights Watch. The number of submunitions is also consistent with most videos of suspected submunition use reviewed by Human Rights Watch.
Following an apparent failed missile test in Iran in 2023, submunitions resembling those Human Rights Watch identified in Israel struck the city of Gorgan in northeastern Iran. These submunitions are equipped with a heat shield that protects them as they descend through the atmosphere, causing a glow visible in videos of their descent. Additionally, Iran is also known to possess multiple other ballistic missiles reportedly capable of delivering submunitions, including variants of the “Ghadr,” “Khorramshar,” and “Fateh” missiles.
“The Iranian government should immediately stop firing cluster munitions,” Thompson said. “These munitions are not only inherently indiscriminate at the time of use, but unexploded submunitions pose a risk long afterwards, until cleared or destroyed.”
Juan Cole
17th century
Metropolit an Museum, New York City: “These two drawings form a single
composition depicting an old man dressed as a dervish pursuing a youth with a
wine bottle an“The Old man and
the Youth,” Painting attributed to Riza-yi ‘Abbasi Iranian. Calligrapher Nur
al-Din Muhammad Lahiji. Second quarter d cup.”
XLII.
And lately, by the Tavern Door
agape,
Came stealing through the Dusk an
Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder;
and
He bid me taste of it; and ’twas
— the Grape!
A. J. Arberry identified the
original as no. 302 in the Calcutta manuscript, a version of which can now be
found on the internet here.
سرمست
بمیخانه گذر کردم دوش
پیری
دیدم مست و سبوئی بر دوش
گفتم
ز خدا شرم نداری ای پیر
گفتا
کرم خداست رو باده بنوش
I would translate this one in
blank verse this way:I staggered, drunk, outside a bar last night
and saw a tipsy elder with a flask
I asked, have you no shame before the Lord?
He answered, God is kind, so have some wine.
As you will notice, in my more literal version there is no angel but rather an old man with a drinking problem.
Arberry (Romance of the Rubáiyát, pp. 21-22) suggested that FitzGerald misread the word for old man (piri ) as that for “fairy” (pari), which accounts for the appearance of a supernatural angel.
I wrote in “Rescuing Omar Khayyam from the Victorians,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Ann Arbor Vol. 52, Iss. 2, (Spring 2013): 169-173,
“The . . . poem given here is about social convention and the shame of drinking — a shame magnified in the case of the elderly, who in Muslim culture ought to have gotten beyond sowing wild oats and settled down to a life of prayer and righteousness in preparation for their imminent departure from this world. The quatrain depicts a younger drunk’s encounter with a brazen old lush, who dismisses such concerns about appearances on the grounds that God’s mercy is big enough to forgive mere wine-bibbing.
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