The Israeli Embassy in Damascus: Security Forces, the Defense Minister, and a U.S. Special Relativity
Over 30,000 Palestinians have died in the six month period since Oct. 7, and much of the territory is in ruins.
The Israeli military said it launched the strike in response to Iranian air assaults on Hezbollah and other places, according to the Times of Israel.
The President cut short his trip to Delaware to go back to the White House. We’re devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel. And Iran will not succeed,” Biden said Friday.
Israel’s defense minister said Saturday that Iran is a “terrorist state”, hours before the launch. “We are determined to defend our citizens against this terrorism, and we know how to respond to it.”
By Saturday, as anticipation had grown over a possible retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents living in communities near Gaza and the Lebanon border to limit the size of gatherings and to work indoors or within reach of a shelter. Israel was closed through Monday.
The Islamic Republic attacked the Israeli Embassy in Damascus in the wake of the Iran embassy attack which killed seven Iranian military advisers, including three top commanders. Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday. Nearly all of them were intercepted, mainly by Israeli or American defenses, with a report of just one Israeli casualty, a girl from a Bedouin community wounded by shrapnel.
The launch was confirmed by the White House, where a spokesman said President Biden would be in the Situation Room to watch the attack.
Israel is ready to defend itself against attacks from Iran and other countries, Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Saturday Night Address on the State TV at the Tel Aviv Synagogue
“We have determined a clear principle: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination,” Netanyahu said.
Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for any scenario, both defensively and offensive, in a Saturday night address to Israelis.
In a statement broadcast on Iranian state television, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched dozens of drones and missiles against targets in Israel.
The drones would have to wait in Israeli airspace for hours, according to Daniel Hagari. He said that if sirens go off in their area, they should stay in safe rooms for 10 minutes.
And Jeffrey Lewis, a member of the International Security Advisory Board at the U.S. State Department, said in a post on X that Iran was using land-attack cruise missiles that could carry around a ton of explosives.
He also noted that much of Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles have a long enough range to reach Israel. Although Iran’s drones carry less explosives than missiles, they are able to hover and shift targets.
Last year, after the attack by Hamas in October, Israel asked the United States for more precision-guided munitions for its combat aircraft and more interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system. Some of Israel’s missiles have a failure rate as high as 15 percent.
According to his post, different versions of that missile have also been provided to the Houthis in Yemen and to the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces.
What to Know about “Iran Attacked Israel, Creating an Already Volatile Conflict, and Its Implications for the Middle East,” Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States
“The question is whether Israel is going to retaliate immediately, or surprise the Iranians in one way or another,” said Efraim Halevy, who served as director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, during the latter part of Mr. Netanyahu’s first term in the 1990s.
In the Middle East, governments such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirate have expressed concern and called for restraint.
The Secretary-General said that he was alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide Escalation after Iran’s attack.
The leaders of the G7 stated in a Sunday statement that they stand in solidarity with Israel and that Iran has caused further instability in the region. The G7 is made up of the United States, Canada, Italy, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the European Union.
Republicans also aim to include language that “holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise announced in a statement released Saturday night.
Changes to the Congress schedule for this week will allow House Republicans to consider a new proposal that would support Israel.
Most of the weapons were intercepted by Israel and its allies. However, a few of the Iranian ballistic missiles made it through the defenses, severely injuring a 7-year-old girl and slightly damaging a military base in southern Israel, according to Israeli officials.
On Sunday, a senior Iranian military official said Iran’s “operation” against Israel had ended and there would be no more attacks coming, according to Iranian state media.
In the days leading up to the attack, the U.S. and Israel closely coordinated their air defense preparations. Still, a U.S. official described the Iranian barrage as being at the “high end” of what the U.S. and Israel expected.
The Arrow3proved itself against a lot of missiles, according to Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
Israel’s Response to the Hamas-Leading Attack on Oct. 7: Israeli Embassy in Damascus and the War in Gaza
Still, several people suffered from shrapnel wounds after the attack, including a 7-year old Bedouin girl who underwent surgery due to a head wound, the Times of Israel and Haaretz reported. Hagari agreed with the reports.
Iran informed the US of the strike before it happened, so the attack won’t hit American personnel or bases, according to the country’s foreign minister. The U.S. officials said there was no notification from Iran prior to the attack.
Israel said it struck a site in southern Lebanon belonging to the Hezbollah militia.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the border with Lebanon regularly since the surprise Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. Iran has long supplied Hamas with funds and weapons but the White House has not directly linked Iran to the Oct. 7 attack.
At the meeting, Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan called for the U.N. to “impose all possible sanctions on Iran before it’s too late.” He said that Israel could retaliate because the attack crossed every red line.
The Israeli war cabinet gathered to discuss how to deal with the Iranian attacks. The leadership of Israel has not made a decision on what it will do.
At home, he is an unpopular leader whom many hold responsible for his government’s policy and intelligence failures that led to the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to go to war in Gaza. Abroad, he is the focus of international censure over Israel’s prosecution of that war, which has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans.
Israel had launched an attack on an Iranian Embassy in Damascus that killed several high-ranking commanders in Iran’s armed forces while Mr. Netanyahu was in attendance.
The Israeli Prime Minister and the First Three Terms of the Oslo-Arabi-Palestinian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (The Israeli Game is Split into Two Narrations)
“Like everything in Israel in recent years, the story is split into two narratives,” said Mazal Mualem, an Israeli political commentator for Al-Monitor, a Middle East news site, and the author of a recent biography of the Israeli leader.
Ms Mualem said that Netanyahu is still in the game, referring to him by his nickname. “He’s a central player, and it isn’t over, diplomatically or politically. And he plays a long game.”
But it was also under Mr. Netanyahu’s watch that Israel forged diplomatic relations with more Arab states that are considered part of the moderate, anti-Iranian axis, including the United Arab Emirates.
Netanyahu has spent so long in office that no Israeli leader has warned about Iran as consistently as he has. Israel’s longest serving prime minister, he has been in power for about 17 years overall.
“Everywhere he went he was talking about it,” recalled Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany and for years the Ministry of Foreign Affairs point man coordinating diplomatic efforts on regional security and the Iranian threat.
He further challenged Mr. Obama in 2015 with an impassioned speech to a joint meeting of Congress denouncing what he called a “bad deal” being negotiated by the United States and other world powers with Iran to curb its nuclear program.
When President Donald J. Trump came to power, Mr. Netanyahu encouraged him to withdraw from the agreement — a move that many Israeli experts have called a dire mistake and a failure of Mr. Netanyahu’s Iran policy.
Airborne Uas for Defense and Reactor Control: How Drones Get Their Attainement and What They’re Trying to Do
The US military has confirmed that it has shot down many Iranian drones, and will continue to do so. The UK will give back for US planes that have been diverted from their current missions, as well as intercept uas on the ground.
Tom Karako says it’s likely that there will be fixed-wing aircraft looking at these things, tracking these things and trying to engage these things.
The slowness and fixed flight paths means that the uys have to travel for a long time before they reach their destination.
They’re not difficult to take down at one level. David Ochmanek, senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, says they don’t fly fast and don’t maneuver. They’re like airborne targets in some way.
The Iron Dome is Israel’s best line of defense, but it is not the only factor. The Shahed-136 drones are made by Iran and have played a role in Russia’s war against Ukraine. These so-called suicide drones—it has a built-in warhead and is designed to crash into targets—are relatively cheap to produce.
Iain Boyd is director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado. It is well-prepared to deal with an onslaught of drones. “A drone is going to be flying probably slower than these rockets,” Boyd says, “so in some ways it’s an easier threat to address.”
The Iron Dome, operational for well over a decade, comprises at least 10 missile-defense batteries strategically distributed around the country. The command-and-control center will keep a close watch on the threat to see if it is a false alarm or not. The system then fires interceptor missiles at the incoming rockets that seem most likely to hit an inhabited area.