Israeli air defenses operating in Ashkelon. Yahoo News.
Iran has launched a major strike against Israel for the first time ever, with over 200 drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles being fired. Yahoo News. The attack was in retaliation for the April 1st Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria. Most of the drones and missiles were destroyed, either by Israel's air defenses or by allied fighter jets, including from the United States. Iran said that the attack is considered "done" as long Israel does not respond, but vowed an even bigger attack if any retaliation happens. It is unclear how many casualties the attack caused but it is assumed to be light.
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My Comment:
As expected the de facto war between Iran and Israel has now become de jure. Everyone was expecting a major attack from Iran and it is now here. Nobody is surprised about this and it is also not surprising that nothing much was accomplished.
Indeed, I think Iran absolutely had to respond to the attack on their embassy. Embassies are considered the soil of the country that owns them and to not respond to a direct attack on one is to lose face. Iran was pretty much forced to respond to such an attack and it should have been no surprise that this happened.
As I said before, I have rarely been critical of Israel during their war against Hamas, but I was critical of their attack on Iran's embassy for this very reason. Though I have little doubt that Iran was coordinating attacks on Israel via the embassy, that's not a good reason to attack one because the obvious potential it has to start a war. And now the war has started.
There is still a chance that a major war could be averted. Iran has said that they consider the matter closed unless Israel responds. If cooler heads were to prevail a major war could be averted. All it would take is for Israel to not respond to this attack, which in theory could be easy as the attack appears to have mostly failed.
In practice I doubt that would happen. Indeed, Israel has said that they are going to respond to this attack sooner rather than later. That could lead to a tit for tat series of attacks by both sides responding to each other and eventually a major war. That is seeming more and more likely despite the fairly limited attack that was launched. Iran has also vowed to attack anyone that helps Israel if they attack as well, so the whole thing could spiral out into a larger regional war.
America is likely to be drawn into the war. Indeed, we are already participating in it since we helped the Israelis shoot down missiles and drones. The good news is that US bases in Syria and Iraq were not attacked as of this writing so it's possible that we could avoid that outcome as well, as long as we don't directly support any Israeli strike on Iran. The big question now is how big that strike will be and if we participate in it.
I do think that all of this could have been prevented. I don't think the war with Hamas would have happened under Donald Trump, or even Barack Obama. More importantly, if Biden hadn't ruined his relationship with Israel, he might have been able to convince them to not strike the Iranian embassy. But as it stands now, Biden has little influence with Israel and I don't think he can stop this war from spiraling out of control.
With that being said, I don't agree with this being the start of World War III, or even another war the size of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I'm expecting more of the same, long range missile and drone strikes with perhaps some old school airstrikes thrown in. Indeed, if Israel does respond to this attack, I expect it to be with their F-35 fighters sometime in the next 24 hours.
Either way though, neither Israel or Iran really has the capability to destroy or invade each other. They don't share a border and it's not like either side can get their forces across Iraq and Syria to strike each other directly. All they can really do is the missile strikes and drones, neither of which will accomplish much. Israel's air strikes could do more but they don't have the airpower needed to destroy Iran's ability to make war on them. Indeed, the Red Sea conflict calmed down because the Houthis ran out of weapon, not because of airstrikes against them. That means that we will probably see a lot more strikes that don't really accomplish anything.
What does concern me is the possibility of terror attacks, either inspired by the conflict or launched by parties involved in it. I have said for awhile now that I think there are Iranian and Hezbollah fighters inside the United States considering how open our border is. If the war does get serious we should expect attacks here in the United States...
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