This is sad. I hope that this is not the beginning of a (much larger) escalation cycle.
Multiple reports says that when those drones get near, Iran will launch multiple Ballistic and Cruise missile that are much faster, with the objective of saturating Israel Defenses.
> with the objective of saturating Israel Defenses.
It seems very likely that Iran is not trying to cause much actual harm. It seems fairly obvious that they are trying to do just enough to be seen doing something against Israel, but not enough to provoke a real retaliation.
No idea if they've skirted that line properly - it's "up to Israel" now in how to respond.
“the Iranian drones, which are several hours away, carry a 20-kilogram warhead, which “the simplest bomb shelter” can protect against, and says he estimates that the drones are likely headed only to military targets.”
That's only the first wave though; a coordinated attack will have the faster moving and more deadly munitions launched much later to arrive with the earlier waves, taking advantage of any distraction and disruption caused by the easier targets.
Which is a retaliation for Iran providing weapons, training, funding and guidance to multiple proxies attacking Israel (Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc)
Not saying the retaliation is a smart move (honestly have no idea), but this didn't come out of the blue.
> An Israeli airstrike carried out within Syria without its consent would be in contravention of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits a state from using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state... Unless Israel were able to justify any airstrike as an act of self-defense, it would be in violation of international law.
> Unless Israel were able to justify any airstrike as an act of self-defense, it would be in violation of international law.
So... not illegal since hezbollah has been targeting and attacking Israel with Iran's help. Israel is defending itself.
In any case there is no law between sovereign states.
Now, Iran's use of drones to retaliate seems calibrated to avoid a further escalation because it is unlikely that they will cause much damage. But let's see how things unfold as apparently Iran has launched a large number of drones...
Maybe. It would depend upon just how much the Irish government was supporting the IRA. What if the Irish government was backing the IRA to the degree that Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas? If that were the case don't you think the UK would respond in the same manner?
Honestly the Israeli response (killing Iranians in a third country) is probably more restrained then the UK would have been. I expect the UK - in a hypothetical world where the Irish had supported the IRA to the degree that Iran supports Hamas/Hezbollah - would have struck Ireland directly and not offered even implausible denials that they had done it but instead trumpeted that fact.
The Hezbollah is currently attacking Israel with Iran's backing and operational support.
That building in Damascus was obviously used by Iran and Hezbollah as operational or command centre, or similar, since personel from both the Iranian military and Hezbollah were killed in the attack.
Hence it was perfectly "legal", for Israel to destroy it in self-defense.
Do you think it was "legal" for Iran to fire hundreds of drones at Israel's civilian areas (which is what Hamas does as well, btw)? I think that this would be a more obvious breach of "international law" if you wanted to be such a stickler for it...
If American proxies in Guatemala attacked say Cuba, would it be legal for Cuba to retaliate by bombing an American embassy in Mexico? If Cuba did do that, would America be justified in responding by bombing Cuba?
My moral framework rejects absolute laws. Breaking laws sometimes doesnt make me bad at all. I can accept that it does in yours, but I dont really care.
Killing completely random people is easy (and a war crime), killing a bunch of military commanders is much harder (and a valid military operation). This was the second one.
I remember hearing almost exactly the same weak excuses when Israel bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius. “Well actually it was the building right next to it (that is exclusively used by it)”. It’s not fooling anyone.
The military commander occupied the building with his subordinates was in charge of weapons transfer from Iran to hezbollah, which has been bombing northern Israel with thousands of rockets in the past 6 months.
The US supports Israel and itself causes terror in the Middle East. US citizens are safest if we withdraw completely and sanction Israel, like we would any other country violating human rights.
I do agree that Iranians are nice people. The people who are in power, however, may have a different vision (and that concerns both Americans and their own people). This is the sad reality of many Arab states.
It simple actually, Iran has no impact on my life where Israel has a very negative impact on my life. I barely want to remain in the tech industry because all of the VCs are pro-genocide. My tax dollars, military and political capital all go to cover Israel. I do not think Israel should have ever been created. It does not benefit me, only harms and endangers.
A broader perspective might suggest that in order to continue your life without adverse impacts, it is in your interest that Iran be prevented from developing nuclear weapons. Israel is doing a lot of work on your behalf in retarding that outcome.
So, even if you are not sympathetic to the plight of our ideological fellow travelers, from a purely utilitarian view, it is in your interest to support Israel.
You support Iran having nuclear weapons in order to keep Israel in check? You're delusional if you think you'd like a world with the people running Iran in charge.
MAD is a well established doctrine for deterrence. The people running Iran are running Iran, not the world. The people running Israel however have undue influence on my and many other countries.
All humans have a will to live, Hamas is fighting against occupation not to commit suicide. The Israeli theocracy however seems to have lost control of all logic and instead is operating in the death throws of an apartheid state coming to its end. The world would be safer with more opposition to Israel.
Thanks for the link, I read every source cited by the wikipedia page, and so far it's been a bunch of uncorroborated claims, and in particular no official confirmation --
> U.S. and Israeli officials said they have no firm evidence so far that Iran authorized or directly coordinated the attack that killed more than 900 Israelis and wounded thousands.
> U.S. officials said Iran has regularly trained militants in Iran and elsewhere, but they have no indications of a mass training right before the attack. U.S. officials and the people familiar with the intelligence said they had no information to suggest Iran conducted training specifically to prepare for the events of Oct. 7.
I'm sure this reserved stance from officials might have something to do with the US not wanting to get dragged into opposition with yet another potential nuclear power, but still.
(In case you're wondering, I suspect your choice of word "Orc" might have something to do with the downvote as well...)
Warning bells are going off in the international community about an imminent attack by Iran on Israel. If it comes, it won’t come be because Iran was unprovoked, as Israel has been provoking Iran into an attack for the last three years by its regular bombing of Iranian bases in Syria, which so far has not worked. Seemingly to increase the provocation, In the first week of April, Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus, which is a clear violation of diplomatic immunity and which no nation does including in wartime out of respect to other nation’s diplomatic missions.
This bombing provocation went even further than violating embassy sovereignty by Israel killing several of Iran’s high ranking military officers which were meeting in an embassy annex at the time. Israel could not have known
about this meeting without high level penetration of Iranian and Syrian governments by Israeli spies. So, just as the war on Hamas was started by inviting the attack by the IDF pulling out most of its soldiers from Southern Israel and leaving it wide open and vulnerable, Israel is apparently
itching for a fight with Iran by provoking it. In short, if war comes, Israel will be just as responsible for it as Iran.
Here's an article that goes into more detail on what international law says about embassies [1].
I'm not sure if the NYT enforces their paywall on that article--it works for me and I'm not a subscriber, but I am signed up for one of their email lists and it is possible that's why I can see it.
For those who get stopped by the paywall TL;DR would be that the international law for embassies and other diplomatic facilities is all about what the "receiving state" can and cannot do. The "receiving state" is the state that the embassy is in.
As far as other states go there is nothing legally special about embassies. So if country X attacks country Y's embassy that is located in country Z as far as international law goes it is pretty much the same as attacking any other random building in Z that happens to have people and stuff from country Y inside.
Jordan temporarily closes airspace
From CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali and Caroline Faraj
The Jordanian Civil Aviation Regulatory Authority announced Saturday the country's airspace will be temporarily closed to all incoming, departing, and transiting aircraft, state news Petra reported, as neighboring Israel remains on high alert for an Iranian strike.
It's about 1000 km from the western border of Iran to Tel Aviv. A Shahed 136 cruises around 185 km/h. Roughly 5.5 hours.
Now, we can't know yet exactly what sort of drones Iran is using here, or exactly from where they we launched, so there are large error bars. But that's where "hours" comes from.
That's not an good tactic for a number of reasons.
The attack involved a lot of drones. Hundreds. Dealing with hundreds of drones with manned fighter aircraft is dubious and possibly a terrible mistake: committing and exposing high value assets for what is, militarily, scutwork.
Fighters don't carry enough gun ammo for the purpose, because ammo is heavy and the guns fire it very rapidly: typically there is only a few seconds of gun ammo capacity in a fighter. Air to air missiles are too precious to use on these targets: they're needed to defend against high value threats and can't be wasted on these crummy, militarized model aircraft from Iran. Also, these drones fly at relatively low altitude, so defending fighters must operate at low altitude and low speed over foreign territory, which is problematic for many reasons. Finally, the drones aren't easy to find because they aren't great radar targets, being small, low altitude, and mostly made of lightweight composites: it is unlikely they can all be detected and engaged quickly enough.
For all of these reasons and others, manned aircraft are poor counter for this sort of attack. Despite this fighter aircraft were used. It was reported that the US, the RAF and the IAF all used manned aircraft to bring down some of these drones. But as you know, many still reached Israel. There, cost effective ground defense did most of the work.
> For all of these reasons and others, manned aircraft are poor counter for this sort of attack. Despite this fighter aircraft were used.
For good reason at the time.
With no after the fact knowledge a hybrid attack with drones that may or may not scatter chaff, may or may not include or be timed to occlude larger threats.
Dealing with drones alone is a poor use of fighter pilots. Having eyeballs in the sky along with "just in case" weapons is smart defensive tactics.
Post game is when armchair coaches can call out whether it was neccessary at that time.
Looks to me like we're in violent agreement. The aircraft weren't deployed to counter drones, which would be foolish, but other possible threats. What drone plinking they did was kinetic diplomacy: the first real news about the conflict after the drones were launched was the prominently repeated "RAF destroyed Iranian drones." Sending the message that Western powers are pulling triggers on behalf of Israel.
They fly low and not in a straight line. Low radar and IR visibility too. IOW you have to be directly in its path to have a chance to shoot it down and because of muted IR signature (no jet), your MANPADS will most likely fly right past it even if you are near. But most of these are probably just decoys. The main strike will be timed to arrive when Israeli AD is depleted by them.
The drones are to overwhelm the defense, news just reported cruise missiles have been launched also. This time the Ayatollahs have pushed it too far as the most logical retaliation will be to go back directly at the leadership....
“Iran’s defense minister has issued a statement warning neighboring countries that any of them that open their airspace to Israel in order to intercept the drones will be targeted”
Indeed, they do seem to be painting a target on their heads.
The warheads available to the craft in the first wave are basically large hand grenades. It's bad, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but it's not exactly carpet bombing either.
One hypothesis, if Iran doesn't escalate more, is that Israel take advantage of not retaliating (which will be devastating for Iran and probably be close to a global war) and ask in return to have a harder stance on Iran. The world has been blind about Iran converting into a nuclear power and USA stance very soft for being USA, the top military and business power in the world.
The other hypothesis is retaliation... which obviously turns to a global war. I don't know if precisely a WWIII because the domestic situation of well developed countries is lazy regarding military action.
Basically someone has to blink. My estimation is that the Israeli government has a lot more latitude since the Iranian governemnt is sort of fueled by this hatred of Israel and the US so they really cant be seen to back down. Luckily this attack wasnt really that bad and to me signifies that Iran doesnt want to escalate so I think likely Israel blinks now with the excuse of focusing on Gaza.
Iran knew that though, which was the point, and does make the attack not that bad. Maybe Im just being hopeful though but it really does seem like Iran did what they could to escalate as little as they realistically could and Israelis will respect that.
it's like if you wearing a bullet proof vest, i shot you. fail to kill. and my defense for attempted murder "he knew it was going to happen and had vest on. it's not that bad after all"
More like "if I didnt try to kill you I would be killed myself, so I shot you in a place I knew it wouldnt kill you". Iran's government has positioned itself so that it needs to respond to avoid unrest. They could not have done nothing, and this wasnt much in the scheme of things.
This would have justified a symbolic attack whilest exporting less weapons and terror which Israel may have correctly interpreted as a victory.
Now we have a very substantial provocation by a party working on nuclear weapons. After they can threaten Armageddon they can export nearly unlimited harm short of existential.
We'll be hearing a justification for a preemptive strike on their ability to make war shortly and in 90 days half their leadership will be dead.
you do realize that it is literally first time that so many ballistic missiles are shot together and nobody even knew till today if it's possible in general to defend against such attack ?
I dont see what that does to quell the domestic calls for a response to the embassy attack. Of course I want Iran to stop the bullshit, but the realty is that they couldnt let this attack go unless they wanted massive unrest. So the question remains, how should Iran respond to the embassy attack? To me this seems like just about that absolute minimum they couldve done.
I’m curious if you think this is bad, what do you think of the number of missiles that are sent to and hit targets in Gaza?
To my eyes, compared to what Israel is actively doing against Palestinians, this really doesn’t seem that bad. In fact I would even go so far as to say it is expected. Countries engaging in genocide rarely do so in peace.
israel doesn't use ballistic missiles in gaza. you also need to look at how many rockets hamas and hezballah shoot at israel. the only reason that there is not more damage and dead it's because israel is vested in protected it's citizens.
Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines, including by using HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
If this keeps up we're going to have to ban your account, so it would be good if you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended use of the site from now on.
i see dozens of accounts constantly posting political, anti israeli content, anti semitic content for months and engaging in same type of discussions. somehow it ok but posting pro israeli content always gets downvoted and accounts banned.
it's not new. i observed it through the years. and it's not only for political topics, but also for anything that doesn't correspond to "majority opinion"
at this point of time this website is worst than reddit and twitter, where plurality of opinions is tolerated.
Somehow many people already "took a side" to defend online as fanatics. This is a product of an hyperconnected world that doesn't allow people to stop and think deeply. The internet's an ever-changing flow of emotions and memes.
“Meanwhile, Iran’s defense minister has issued a statement warning neighboring countries that any of them that open their airspace to Israel in order to intercept the drones will be targeted”
Flagging is a user action here, not an admin action; mostly just means that there's enough people here who think it's off-topic; possible motivations for doing so are pretty transparent.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Iranians who were employed by the iranian military and were giving Hezbollah missiles to be shot at Israel for anyone who wants a bit more context. Not a fan of this attack but its not like it was unprovoked.
Upvotes don't counteract flags here: if the people who flagged the post, also flagged comments, the comments would still be tagged as flagged; graying out from negative vote balance is separate.
I've flagged my share of stories on the topic, not because I consider myself to be on any "side" of the issue – other than the "side" of humanism – but because any thoughtful discourse on the topic is damn near impossible, and endless repetition of the same tired old stuff adds nothing to the site.
Iran's recent missile and drone strike on Israel seems largely symbolic, likely a response to internal pressures after Israel's airstrike on their Damascus facility. This controlled retaliation shows Iran's attempt to manage national pride without escalating to full-scale war. A strategic move more about sending a message than causing real damage.
I don't completely disagree, but note that Iran probably factored in the defense capabilities when choosing what to do. They likely wouldn't have sent such a massive wave if they thought it would kill hundreds of people.
