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Comment by bluefishinit | Hacker News Reader

This is in retaliation for Israel bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_bombing_of_the_Iranian...

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.

From the link that you posted...

"destroyed the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy..."

That's an impressively effective strike, took out 14 Iranian/Hezbollah commanders and only 2 unfortunate civilian casualties.

It was an illegal strike:

> 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.

international law is an oxymoron

> 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...

So it would have been legal for the UK to bomb Dublin in the 90s because the IRA was bombing civilians in the UK?

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...

From Iran's point of view they were attacked.

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?

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.

Please explain how this was used against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state.

What’s impressive about bombing an embassy? Like, pick a random embassy in a random country and bomb it, you’ll kill a bunch of people.

It was a building NEAR the embassy used by Iranian army and Hizbollah. It was not something official.

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.

In this case we have pretty strong proof since we know exactly who was killed in the strike, don't we?

> What’s impressive about bombing an embassy?

They covered that in words 6 through 17 of their comment.

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.

And what was that in retaliation for?

Nothing, Israel is trying to broaden the war and drag the US and western countries further into it.

The attack was against Hezbollah leaders who have been launching missiles into Israel.

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.

Decades of Iranian proxies killing Israelis?

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.

https://worldaffairsbrief.com/

> Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus, which is a clear violation of diplomatic immunity

That is not correct. Protection of embassies only applies against the host country.

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.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/europe/interpreter-...

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