Just to keep it real; there was ample evidence that Iran orchestrated & enabled the Oct 6th Gaza attack. They provide almost 100% of the funding for Hamas, and actually trained 500 of the fighters involved in the attack a mere 30 days prior to the incursion.
To the idiots who say that Bibi had no choice but to annihilate Gaza City and it's 2 million inhabitants, I say rubbish. They should have immediately launched against Iran's nuclear site from the start. Their enemy is Iran (Hamas is simply one of their tentacles).
Besides Israel's game of whack the mole in Gaza hasn't destroyed Hamas...ergo a worthless exercise that has fomented a whole new generation of angry young who rightfully will want to get even?
Israel Strikes Iran in Narrow Attack Amid Escalation Fears
Blasts reported near central city of Isfahan; Iran rescinds airspace restrictions as state media plays down incident
By Dov Lieber, Aresu Eqbali, Benoit Faucon and Rory Jones, WSJ
Updated April 19, 2024
Israel retaliated overnight against Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on its territory, people familiar with the matter said—with what appeared to be a limited strike aimed at avoiding an escalatory cycle that could push the countries closer toward war.
Speaking at the end of a meeting of the Group of Seven nations in Capri, Italy, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that the U.S. was informed by Israel “at the last minute of the attack” early Friday morning.
“There was no involvement on the part of the United States, it was only information that was provided,” he said.
The strike targeted the area around Isfahan in central Iran, one of the people said. Iranian media and social media reported explosions near the city, where Iran has nuclear facilities and an air base, and the activation of air-defense systems in provinces across the country after suspicious flying objects were detected.
Israel retaliated against Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on its territory, a person briefed on the matter said. The strike targeted the area around Isfahan, which has nuclear facilities and a drone factory.
Much remained unclear about the extent or the impact of the Israeli action. State-run news agency IRNA said Friday morning that its reporters hadn’t seen any large-scale damage or explosions anywhere in the country and that no incidents were reported at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Flight restrictions imposed overnight by Iran were lifted in the morning.
Iranian state television repeatedly played down the episode in its broadcasts, saying three small flying objects had been downed by air-defense systems and suggesting they had been launched from within the country. Iran’s army chief, Abdolrahim Mousavi, told state-run media the explosions heard in Isfahan were a result of the downing of a suspicious object that caused no damage.
State media in Syria, meanwhile, said Friday that Israel also attacked air-defense sites in the country. Iran in recent days had evacuated personnel from sites in Syria, where its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has a large presence. Israel told Arab allies this week that it might limit its retaliatory attacks to Iran-linked facilities in Syria, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the Syria strikes, mirroring a broader reticence among Israeli officials on Friday to talk about the strikes in either Iran or Syria.
The narrow Israeli attack and Iran’s rhetoric in response appeared to be an attempt by both sides to calm tensions after more than a week of concerns that Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza would metastasize into a bigger regional conflict, though fears remain of a miscalculation.
Israel was under pressure from the U.S. and Europe to moderate its response and faced the challenge of delivering a blow that would punish Iran for the attack without provoking a response.
In Israel, the military said late Thursday night that there were no changes to the home-front command instructions that tell the public when to seek shelter, indicating Israeli officials weren’t expecting a major Iranian retaliation.
Isfahan is home to an Iranian air base that houses S-300 antiaircraft batteries, a sophisticated air-defense system made by Russia, according to open-source researchers who track satellite imagery.
Israel strikes central Iran
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel’s attack likely targeted the base as a symmetrical response to Iran’s attack on an Israeli air base on Saturday. Israel’s strike, he said, was likely the first time it struck a military target in Iran protected by the S-300. The fact that Isfahan is also home to important Iranian nuclear facilities, Dubowitz said, also made it a symbolic choice for Israel.
“It sends a message we can penetrate your air defenses and hit your crown jewels,” Dubowitz said.
The attack appeared to be similar to earlier drone strikes attributed to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, said Ronen Solomon, an independent intelligence analyst in Israel.
He said the attack signaled to Iran that Mossad could covertly hit a nuclear or military site without overtly using the Israeli military or its aircraft. Israel likely wanted to avoid an attack on nuclear sites, or a broader assault, because Israeli officials were concerned Iran would use strikes as an excuse to move ahead with its nuclear program, he said.
“It’s more symbolic,” Solomon said, allowing Israel to send a message to Iran and for Tehran in turn to announce that Israel’s attack did little damage.
The Israeli action was a response to an unprecedented direct attack by Iran that involved more than 300 drones and missiles aimed at Israeli territory. That attack itself was retribution for a strike attributed to Israel that killed top Iranian officers in Damascus, Syria.
Most of the drones and missiles fired by Iran were shot down, and the rest did little damage and caused no deaths, giving Israel room to respond with less intensity.
Iran has ramped up warnings in recent days that it would respond aggressively to any Israeli strike. It also signaled Thursday that it could accelerate work on nuclear weapons if its nuclear facilities were targeted.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers from his Likud party that he was determined to respond to Iran, but that the action would be “sensible and not something irresponsible,” according to a person familiar with the matter. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also spoke Thursday to discuss Iran’s actions in the region, according to the Pentagon.
Russia has communicated to Israel that Iran doesn’t want the skirmishes that have recently erupted between them to escalate, and Moscow doesn’t want an increase in the tensions either, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told state media outlets Friday.
In an interview with the daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and the radio stations Sputnik and Moscow Speaks, Lavrov revealed that there had been telephone contacts between the leadership in Moscow and Tehran, and between Russian representatives and the Israeli government.
“We very clearly…conveyed to the Israelis that Iran does not want escalation,” Lavrov said.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, was one of the few Israeli officials to react publicly to the strike in Iran. He wrote a one-word post on X: “Weak.”
Israel has otherwise remained officially silent about the strike.
An air-defense system at a military base in northern Tehran on Wednesday.
The direct exchange of blows between Israel and Iran risked taking the conflict that began with militant group Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel to a dangerous new level, one that threatens to embroil the U.S. and Gulf states in a regional conflagration that they have worked hard to prevent.
Iran had long pursued its conflict with Israel through a network of Middle East proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen as it sought to avoid a full-scale conventional conflict. It changed that equation with the direct strikes against Israel, gambling that it could reset the informal rules that have provided some predictability to the strikes and counterstrikes over the years.
Israeli officials have said the direct strikes demanded a response. The overnight retaliation isn’t Israel’s first attack within Iran’s territory.
In January 2023, an Israeli drone strike inside Iran hit an advanced weapons-production facility, according to people familiar with the operation. The strike was carried out by Israel’s Mossad and targeted a Ministry of Defense site in Isfahan, hitting a building in four different areas with precision strikes, the people said.
Israel never acknowledged that operation. The people familiar with the matter compared it to an Israeli quadcopter drone strike in 2022 on Iranian drone-production sites in the western city of Kermanshah.
Israel is juggling a fast-growing number of military challenges. It is already fighting on three fronts: in Gaza against Hamas and on its northern border with Hezbollah, as well as trying to quell unrest in the West Bank. On Friday, the Israeli military said it launched an airstrike on a building in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah fighters were operating, the latest tit-for-tat exchange of fire between the two sides.
Israel is under pressure to restore deterrence with Iran and its proxies but also must hold together the tenuous strategic partnership that helped it block Iran’s attack last Saturday.
“A ‘de-escalatory strike,’” Yonatan Touval, a board member at Israeli think tank Mitvim, wrote on X of Israel’s attack on Iranian territory. “Barring any unexpected developments, Israel’s strike inside Iran earlier today may well merit the coinage of this new term.”
Anat Peled, Gordon Lubold and Ann M. Simmons contributed to this article.