My gut is Iran wanted the missiles to be intercepted. They wanted to show they are not pushovers but don’t want to escalate too much. In some sense the whole thing was a fireworks display by the countries involved. Like a warning shot.
Two kids are on the playground, one has a big brother. They’re both constantly bothering each other. The kid without the big brother has to ride a thin line to not look like he’s trying to kill the other kid (causing the big brother to run over) while still bruising him back enough that the other kid leaves him alone until next week.
Time for a trump card: escalation of the conflict will keep the extremists happy and keep the hostilities going for possibly years. Bibi’s best choice.
Because of this conflict, Israel has ~80k citizens who have had to evacuate their homes because they are too close to the border, and they are afraid to come back with Hezbollah continuing to attack.
See e.g. this random article: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-global...
> According to a report in The Guardian, Zahedi “commanded units in Lebanon and Syria and was most likely a critical figure in Tehran’s relationship with Hezbollah and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad”.
> Arab News quoted a US Department of the Treasury statement from August 3, 2010, saying that Zahedi “also acted as a liaison to Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence services and is reportedly charged with guaranteeing weapons shipments to Hezbollah.”
AFAIK, even during the Cold War, when the US was arming Russia's enemies (like Afghanistan) and Russia was arming the US's enemies (like Vietnam), neither nation went so far as to assassinate generals from the other.
We even asked Ukraine not to attack a Russian general.[1]
So, historically, it seems like what Israel did would not generally be considered justified.
(OTOH, we did assassinate Yamamoto, but we were actively at war with Japan.)
But yes, this is a complicated issue.
> Some experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, considered the assassination [of Soleimani] as a likely violation of international law as well as U.S. domestic laws.
(And btw, imagine Iran having then sent 150 missiles aimed at the US. Seems to me like the US would respond.)
I tend to agree the strikes on embassies/consulates is not a great precedent, but it's hard to think of a less sympathetic victim.
If so, it didn’t work at all. So, allowing the Israelis to have hours of advance notice was either terrible tactics or an overt signal that they don’t want to escalate. I think it was probably the latter.
The blog post is seriously mistaken to interpret this as "hooray we are all safe from drone attacks!!!"