Iran said to begin attack on Israel, launching drones
timesofisrael.com
timesofisrael.com
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_bombing_of_the_Iranian...
> 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.
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...
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?
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.
They covered that in words 6 through 17 of their comment.
"destroyed the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy..."
Not saying the retaliation is a smart move (honestly have no idea), but this didn't come out of the blue.
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.
That is not correct. Protection of embassies only applies against the host country.
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.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/europe/interpreter-...
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.
I don’t know how the countries the drones, fighters, or missiles flying through or over will respond.
Israel wants to intercept before arrival to airspace and Iran said anyone who opens airspace will “face a decisive response”.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-has-repo...
Even without that, they could still rely on cameras and old fashion navigation.
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.
This may also be cover for an attack from a different direction.
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 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.
in a false flag operation drones which take hours to arrive can be a threat
Indeed, they do seem to be painting a target on their heads.
with regards to "domestic calls", you should go and read some data on support levels of iranian government, etc.
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.
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.
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.
[1] "Fending Off Iran Attack Is a Major Israeli Achievement. Retaliation Would Risk an All-out Regional War" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-14/ty-article/.p...
> 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.
Those missiles and drones could have caused a lot of death and a lot of damage if the defense was any less then it was.
Also, they did cause a lot of "damage" in terms of expended defense capabilities.