Iranian missiles falling on Israel. AP.
Iran has launched 180 missiles at Israel raising fears of a major regional war. AP. Missiles fell all over Israel while civilians fled to bomb shelters. The attacks appear to have been ineffective, causing only a few injuries. Israel has been attacking Hezbollah recently and the attacks against Israel appear to be a response to Israel doing major damage to the terror group. Israel has vowed retaliation against Iran and have continued to bomb Hezbollah in Lebanon with minor forces having crossed the border already. Israel said most missiles were intercepted by their Iron Dome system. One Palestinian man was killed in the raid as a missile fell short of Israel and hit the West Bank instead. The US said they helped Israel by shooting some of the missiles down.
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My Comment:
There had been hopes that a 2nd round of missile strikes against Israel would have been avoided. There was fears over summer that this exact thing would happen but in the end cooler heads prevailed. So what has changed?
Obviously this is blowback for Israel's recent actions against Hezbollah. The pager, radio attacks and the decapitation strikes against Hezbollah was not going to go unanswered. Hezbollah is Iran's proxy army and the utter defeat that Hezbollah suffered in the initial stages of this war had to have a response or Iran was going to lose a tremendous amount of face.
The missiles appear to have been ineffective. Many of these missiles were shot down and the ones that weren't didn't hit anything important. Supposedly, people on social media are saying that a missile hit near the Mossad headquarters but no actual damage was done.
Regardless though, it seems unlikely that Israel will not send a response of their own, possibly targeting Iran's nuclear plants and research. If they don't strike they will be the ones that lose face, so they will almost certainly strike back. And then Iran has threatened to respond to the response and could even target oil production facilities in neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia, drawing them into the war as well.
America could also be drawn into the war. Our ships were trying to intercept some of these missiles and we are still deeply engaged with the Houthis in Yemen. It's very possible that our ships and bases in the Middle East could come under attack in the tit-for-tat conflict that appears to be coming. Such a war would be unpopular to say the least.
Of an even greater concern is the fact that both Iran and Hezbollah have sleeper cells here in America and across Europe. We already know that Iran has a team here in the United States with a goal of assassinating Donald Trump, they might make the attempt now. And Trump is hardly the only person at risk. Other politicians are as well and that's not to mention the threat to civilians. If an attack on our ships didn't draw us into the war, an assassination or terror attack would certainly do so.
Is there any hope of a wider war being avoided? Possibly. War looked inevitable over the summer but it was avoided for at least a time. Something similar could happen here. But the problem is that it's going to be up to Iran and Israel. The Biden administration didn't have any pull in either country before Biden was exposed as being senile, now neither side will listen to him. Perhaps Russia or China could step up and cut a deal so both sides don't kill each other, but I am not hopeful.
This, of course, has election implications. There is yet another October Surprise in a year that has had two already, the poor response to Hurricane Helene and the brand new longshoreman strike (which I was going to cover tonight before the strikes happened). I am guessing the anti-Israel faction of the Democrats are going to be furious that Harris has vowed to support Israel in their wars against Hezbollah and Iran. And nobody is going to be happy that a major war is breaking out when they can clearly remember that the world was dramatically more peaceful under Donald Trump...
As for Israel, I do fear that they are overextending themselves. They are still fighting Hamas in Gaza and are now launching an invasion against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Houthi rebels in Yemen are fighting them as well. Can they really deal with all that on their own while also conducting a war against Iran? They could be in trouble here...
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