The course of war may be determined by Iran as it launches an attack on Israel
The Iran-Israel Armistice and Nuclear Barrage In The First Months of a Long-Baseline Fission: State-of-the-Art Analysis
American officials were assessing how a missile exchange would unfold between Iran and Israel. The most optimistic prediction has been a repeat of what happened in April, when the United States, Israel, Jordan and others intercepted almost all of the hundreds of missiles and drones fired toward Israel.
Analysts say that Iran saw its missile strikes against Israel as a signal to Western powers to put more pressure on the Tehran government, even though the missiles caused minimal military damage on the Israeli side.
The more extreme scenarios being explored by the American officials involve Israel hitting at the nuclear facility in Natanz, the center of the Iranian program. American officials said Iran could produce bomb grade enriched uranium in days or weeks if it chose to do so. It would take far longer to produce a nuclear weapon.
Israeli officials stated in April that the Iranian attack included missiles, drones, and cruise missiles. Most were launched from Iran, but a small number were fired from Iraq and Yemen. The weapons used in the barrage were more sophisticated than anything Israel had encountered during the first six months of fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
The attack caused damage to one military base and a girl from the Arab Bedouin community nearby was seriously injured.
Israeli Air Defense Against an Iranian Militia Attack and Embedded Security Forces: The Case for Tuesday’s Counterattack
Grant Rumley, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Iran will likely repeat the April attack with a combination of missiles. “This time, it’s clear Iran wanted to avoid the failures of April by primarily using ballistic missiles, he said, “which travel much faster and can quickly overwhelm an air defense system.”
Unlike the April attack where Israel had days of warning to coordinate defenses with their allies in the region, Tuesday’s attack came with only hours of advance notice.
Israel has a freer hand to respond forcefully to Iran’s missile barrage on Tuesday than it did in April, security analysts and former officials say, when its retaliation for the previous Iranian attack was a largely symbolic strike against an air-defense installation in Iran.
Israel was concerned that a response too intensive would prompt Iran’s proxy militias to retaliate extensively.
After launching a bombing campaign thatkilled Hezbollah’s leader and other commanders, Israel has weakened Hezbollah and removed Iran’s armor against a broader Israeli attack, according to a retired Israeli intelligence officer who specialized in Iran.
The Biden administration may urge Israel to curb its response. But with American elections fast approaching, U.S. officials were likely to have less influence than they did in April, Mr. Citrinowicz said, when they similarly pressed to avoid an attack that could escalate the conflict.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari called Iran’s attack “a severe and dangerous escalation,” and promised, “We will respond wherever, whenever and however we choose.” On Wednesday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said the response will be ”decisive and painful.”
The only question, General Amidror said, was “how much can we harm them versus their capacity to harm us.” He added he believed that the damage Israel inflicted on Hezbollah had diminished the threat of Iran’s proxies.
Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, wrote on social media that Israel was facing “the biggest opportunity in the past 50 years” to change the face of the region.
“We must act now to destroy its nuclear project, destroy their major energy facilities and critically hit this terrorist regime,” Mr. Bennett said of Iran. “The tentacles of that octopus are severely wounded — now’s the time to aim for the head,” he added.
The Israeli Military Is Using “Localized” Operations to End the War on Hezbollah in Lebanon, Revisited
The only confirmed death was in the West Bank, where a Palestinian man was killed after a missile fell on the city.
The Israeli military announced a soldier killed in combat in Lebanon, according to The Associated Press, which said Hezbollah claimed to have killed and wounded an unspecified number of Israeli troops.
Also on Wednesday, sirens went off across Israel’s north after the Israeli military said around 100 rockets were fired from Lebanon. Near the Lebanon border, there are military advisories for communities in the port city of Haifa.
The Israeli military warned residents of 24 more villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate on social media. He said that if you are near Hezbollah fighters, facilities, or weapons you must leave your homes immediately.
The Israeli military said it is deploying more soldiers and an armored tank brigade to assist in what it called a “limited, localized” ground offensive against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Lebanon’s capital, said that the strategic advantage is that it maintains the loyalty of these groups across the region.
Citing what it said were Western promises of renewed diplomacy to end the conflict, Iran had largely stayed restrained in the face of the July assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh and as Israel intensified the fight against Hezbollah over recent weeks, culminating with the killing of the group’s leader and a ground invasion in Lebanon.
