Israel faced an attack from Iran
Hamas Attack on Israel: The U.S. will Defend “The Terrorist State” Israel, Israel’s Defense Minister, and the White House
Israeli bombardment of Gaza and a devastating ground invasion left much of the territory in ruins and more than 35,000 Palestinians dead, according to Palestinian health officials.
The strike and retaliation represent an escalation that many officials worldwide had expressed worry about ever since the outbreak of war between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, the day Hamas led an attack on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead.
“President Biden has been clear: our support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “The United States will back Israel in their fight against Iran, and we will do all that we can to keep them safe.”
“Iran is a terrorist state — the world is seeing this now more than ever,” Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said Saturday, hours before the launch. “We know how to respond to terrorism and we are determined to defend our citizens against it.”
By Saturday, as anticipation had grown over a possible retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents living in communities near Gaza and the Lebanon border to limit the size of gatherings and to work indoors or within reach of a shelter. Schools across Israel were closed through Monday.
The launch comes just four days after Iran’s leader vowed revenge for an April 1 attack on its embassy in Damascus. Iran said that the strike had killed seven of their members and blamed Israel for the attack.
The launch was confirmed by the White House, where a spokesperson said President Biden would monitor the attack from the Situation Room alongside top defense and diplomatic officials.
Israel is ready for any scenario, regardless of threat: Israeli response to Hamas, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (VIRUS) launches on Saturday night
Whoever harms us, we will harm them. Netanyahu said they will defend themselves against any threat with determination.
In a Saturday night address to Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for “any scenario, both defensively and offensively.”
Late Saturday, Iran began firing hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, including weapons that experts say are more sophisticated than anything Israel had encountered until now in six months of fighting with Hamas and its allies in the region.
The Israeli military said it would take hours for the drones to arrive in Israeli airspace. He said that if sirens went off, Israelis should stay in safe rooms for 10 minutes.
And Jeffrey Lewis, a member of the International Security Advisory Board at the U.S. State Department, said in a post on X that Iran was using land-attack cruise missiles that could carry around a ton of explosives.
The weapons Iran used on Saturday can travel much farther, and some of them can travel much faster. Still, Israel said that nearly all of the missiles and drones that Iran fired were intercepted, many with help from U.S. forces.
The rockets of the Grad family as well as Russian-made M-302 missiles have a range of about 100 miles, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad have previously launched aerial attacks on Israel. Hamas also has Fajr-5 rockets from Iran and a similar, locally made version of the Fajr-5, both with a range of about 50 miles.
He claims that different versions of that missile were given to the Houthis in Yemen and to the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces.
The US military confirmed that it has shot down a number of Iranian drones, but said they would continue to do so. The UK has said it will provide backup for US planes that have been diverted from their existing missions, and that it will intercept UAVs as well.
“Because there’s so much indication of warning in advance of the UAS, presumably there’s going to be a lot of fixed-wing, manned aircraft that are looking at these things, tracking these things, and presumably trying to engage these things,” says Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy think tank.
That slowness and fixed flight path in particular mean the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have to travel for several hours before they reach their intended destination, leaving ample opportunities to intercept them.
“At one level they’re not difficult to take down. They’re not stealthy, they don’t fly very fast, and they don’t maneuver,” says David Ochmanek, senior defense analyst at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. “In some way they’re like airborne targets.”
Things get more complicated if the drones are flying so low that the radar can’t detect them. The biggest challenge, though, may be sheer quantity. Even with hundreds of missiles at its disposal, there is still a chance that Israel could be overwhelmed by a Hamas missile onslaught like it was on October 7.
The director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado says that the process was designed to defend against low-flying missiles. Which makes it quite prepared for a lot of drones. “A drone is going to be flying probably slower than these rockets,” Boyd says, “so in some ways it’s an easier threat to address.”
The Iron Dome is a collection of missile-defense batteries that are strategically distributed around the country. When radar detects incoming objects, it sends that information back to a command-and-control center, which will track the threat to assess whether it’s a false alarm, and where it might hit if it’s not. The system fires missiles at the incoming rockets that most likely will hit an inhabited area.
