Iran launches drone attack against Israel as Biden rushes to White House
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.
iran is funding and arming hamas, hizballah and the houthis, all of which were attacking israel.
in addition to their attacks on usa bases.
Wasn't Hamas created in response to Israeli aggression?
Not defending Hamas, but they don't exist in a vacuum.
The religious extremism that became Hamas was funded and grew to power with Israeli funding.
As usual in the Middle East, the answer is "it's complicated". Anyone claiming that either Israel or Iran is 100% good or 100% bad is wrong.
And continued by Netanyahu himself: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
The Israeli far-right gained power in part due to Hamas, PLO and Hezbollah attacks.
It's an endless spiral of violence, reprisal and even more violence.
The goal of Hamas is not “to stop aggression” but to destroy Israel. So it was formed as response to Israel existence, to which many Muslims never agreed.
Israel is born out of aggression
Nonsense. It was born according to UN resolution (and League of Nations resolution as well). And since then the aggression was directed against Israel with multiple wars initiated by those who did not want to agree with the resolutions. If it were not for those wars many Arab/Muslim lives would be saved and there would not be a situation we are today. The situation with Palestine today is direct consequence of all that history because how Israel can trust an independent Palestine when Gaza ruling party has destruction of Israel as one of the main principle. The same principle that you seem to support by the way, thus supporting the cycle of violence with no prospects of peace.
don't forget that those fucks also support Russia with their drones...
Yup. I've seen a disturbing amount of people pretending Iran are the good guys just because Israel are also the bad guys, as if it's impossible for multiple sides in a conflict to be awful
The Good Guy Iran narrative is so bizarre. It's like applauding someone for "showing restraint" because they hired a hitman instead of killing someone themselves.
It’s also not covered within international law to fund an attack by independent groups, only sovereign nations.
Funding Ukraine makes it legally Ukraine’s action. Funding Houthis makes it legally Iran’s action.
There are no good guys in the middle east. Only civilians that are angry about being shit on.
Yes there are. Hero doctors and nurses who risk their lives to save civillian patients. Aid workers. World Central Kitchen workers.
That's the side we should be on.
Wait, now you motherfuckers understand how multiple sides can be bad?
All I keep hearing from people like you is how Israel must be fucking great because fucking did something wrong so Israel can’t do anything else wrong
Who are "people like you?" I've seen plenty of people who are capable of recognizing that Israel's behavior has been atrocious and Iran funds and sponsors terrorists and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
That is absolutely not a popular sentiment here.
Cool it with the targeted language too
Homie go check my history, you'll see I am far from a fan of Israel and the IDF
Fair enough I got heated, mea culpa.
I apologize
Maybe you didn't know yet. But Israel sold $ 400 Million worth drones to Russia. And they have been used in the war against Ukraine by Russia. Meanwhile Israel did not sanction Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.haaretz.com/2010-10-14/ty-article/israel-signs-400-million-deal-to-sell-spy-drones-to-russia/0000017f-dbe8-db5a-a57f-dbea5c4b0000
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/report-russia-purchased-ten-israeli-drones-415575
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-photos-claim-to-show-downed-russian-drone-with-israeli-origin/
Note that Israel continued to sell drones to Russia after the Crimea annexation by Russia. So it can also not be said, that they didn't knew what Russia would do with them. Israel was happy to aid Russia's invasion from the very beginning.
Meanwhile Israel funds and arms terrorist groups in Iran like the Mojahiden-e-khalq or Al-Nusra in Syria, in addition to their cyber attacks on Iran and assassinations of Iranian scientists.
al-nusra in syria is funded by qatar, which syrians are suing for that.
the mek was allegedly supported also by israel, along with the saudis and the usa.
which had to start after their funding and cooperation with saddam hussein. so after 2003. much after iran's support for hamas since the 1990's and the founding of hizballah in the 1980's.
and since then they've barely done anything other than the 2 assassinations related to iran's nuclear program. not even close to hamas, houthis' or hizballah's actions. and they barely have any weapons or funding compared, let alone thousands of rockets and drones.
Of course Saudi tries to blame their enemy Qatar. That was more of an accusation than any solid proof, at which point the CIA likely helped them to since they were toppling Assad.
Meanwhile according to Wikipedia:
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)
That’s not so obvious. The US heavily supported the Saudi’s military campaign against Ansar Allah which ultimately failed. The US has since bombed them directly which has also failed. Like if the US didn’t have the capacity institutionally or otherwise to eliminate the Taliban why would Ansar Allah be any different?
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.
I don't think the warlords of the taliban are the closest available comparison. I also don't think the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan is the closest available comparison.
That said, it would still become a huge mess, as I clearly indicated
You need to read more, A LOT more, to even begin to opinate on how easy it would be for America to "delete" the leadership of this Yemeni faction.
The northern part of Yemen is mountainous and these guys are tribal people from that area, who have taken over a large part of the rest of Yemen, to the point that Saudi Arabia directly intervened to try and stop them and have been at it for many years now (and it's not working).
It's not perfectly like Afghanistan (and it would never be, as it's not Afghanistan) yet the whole situation is a lot more like Afghanistan, than, say Iraq, so your casual expectation that the US can "delete" them is ridiculous and seems to have no foundations other than nationalism and ignorance of the situation.
No, I'm good. Simmer on the tone.
I made very clear it would not be a good thing. I'm not stanning for another middle east war.
The houthi faction has much more established infrastructure and footprint than the afghani Taliban ever did, and it was obviously that infrastructure i was referring to.
Further, the mountains of Afghanistan are much larger and more complicated than those of Yemen. I didn't say Yemen is flat.
Let me put things another way: you originally made quite a tall claim that the US "if it wants could delete the Houthi leadership" and confronted with my point that in similar conditions not long ago the US failed to "delete" a leadership even though it wanted to, your whole argument is now "it's not quite the same conditions".
Of course it's not the same: it's a bloody different country.
The thing is, merely me pointing out a situation were the US failed to "delete" a leadership when it wanted to is enough to prove my point (and if you want another example, how about Vietnam) because I was never making the point that the US will fail if it tries, I was making the point that US is not guaranteed to succeed, i.e. I was disproving your original claim and all that it takes to disprove a certaintly of success is to point out 1 situation where the it was a failure.
The entirety of your argument now is about "it might succeed" because Yemen ain't Afghanistan.
Well, yeah, sure, I agree that it might, but that's not what you wrote originally: what you wrote originally is that "if it wants it can", which is a whole different claim from "it can try and maybe it will succeed".
Whilst Yemen not being Afghanistan means US is not guaranteed to fail to "delete the Houthi leadership" if it tries (and I never claimed it will), Yemen being similar to Afghanistan makes it more likely (IMHO) that the US will fail than if, for example Yemen was like Iraq instead.
All that however is mere decoration to my original disproving of your original post which was done since I pointed out how it once in the recent past wanted to and failed.
I made 2 points:
The US could make a targeted strike to decapitate houthi leadership and and command infra. I made this claim knowing a bit about Yemen, but specifically knowing that Yemen is very different from Afghanistan and that the leadership and critical military infrastructure is very different to afghan / Taliban setups.
This action would result in a "quagmire" the likes of our past attempts to assert control over a middle eastern country via military power.
I am and have been clear that America shouldn't do this, wouldn't be successful in the long run, and wouldn't create any of the change they would hope to achieve.
Edit but if they foolishly chose to, they absolutely could strike Yemen and massively destabilize / decapitate / destroy much of what makes the houtis a regional concern.
It doesn't make sense that the Houthi "critical military infrastructure" is made of up of big fat targets that can just be bombed by a nation with air superiority for the simple reason that the Houthis have been bombed by Saudi Arabia (which has air superiority over Yemen), using US provided hardware and likely intel, for over a decade and they're still there and still control most of the country.
This isn't Iraq with AA and radar emplacements, big fat army barracks, large ammo depots or even government buildings that you can just take out to significantly degrade their combat effectivness and remove command and control structures.
Maybe there once were big fat critical infrastructures Houthi targets that the US could just take out there, but over a decade of war with an enemy with exactly the strategy of hitting them from the air has made sure it's not the case anymore.
That the US and UK bombings to stop the Houthis from attacking ships seem to have failed miserably, is something that indicates that the Houthis are adapted to exactly the kind of attack favored by the US to takeout "critical military infrastructure" and leadership.
Another point is that judging not just by the Poshtun in Afghanistan but other similar tribal groups, taking out their leadership just results in new ones getting the job - tribal groups in the Middle East don't just get totally lost and collapse as an effective military force if you take the top people out.
My reading of the actions of the US there now after the bombings failed to yield significant results is that they're now playing the "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" game and instead of trying to take out the leaders (who are known variables) which would just see them replaced by unknown variables, they're trying negotiating with them instead.
There guys keep losing wars and fucking up internationally, yet still behave like they have presidency over everyone's existence lmao
Admission
Israel escalated by striking an embassy, breaking the Vienna convention, to Iran arming insurgents. That was Israel launching four missiles at Iranian sovereign territory, targeting high-ranking Iranian military officials, on ground that is considered to be sacrosanct internationally to preserve diplomacy in times of war.
The thing is, the drones are proportional retaliation, but still, it should be on both sides to try to de-escalate.
What I see though is that Israel wasn't even condemned for the attack, in fact they tried to claim it wasn't even an embassy they hit. Now the problem is that Iran, with its leadership and government being how it is, can't let this go as they are humiliated. When Trump killed Soleimani, which was a similar strike (but not at an embassy!), Iran launched attacks at US bases, wounding US troops which the US let go without retaliation. That's how it got de-escalated.
Your point with "let's humiliate Iran by performing a show of force" is that they won't take it and de-escalate. It will make it worse. I'm not saying we should let Iran walk all over us, but stepping in to cover one shitty side against another will just lead to either war or another 9/11.
You didn't mention the ship they took. If you think the missiles and drones (dozens) are proportional, then the ship makes no sense. Commandeering a civilian ship is clearly extra and disproportionate. They're probably not going to give that up without getting something in return.
The leaders of Iran are desperate to seem tough to their domestic audience, like Putin. That's why they did this. Unfortunately for the people of Iran, this is going to hurt them further with sanctions.
Iran attacked the specific military installations that Israel used to perform their highly illegal attack on the Iranian embassy. This is the most textbook example of textbook examples of appropriate, proportional and measured self-defense we have seen in a very long time in the entire region. The relevant thing to count is not the number of missiles or drones, but the number of targets and their relevance to the case.