RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/19/israel-will-not-appease-iran-after-the-april-13-attack/

 It appears that Israel fired drones at a military target—possibly an air base—near Isfahan, Iran, as part of a limited, precision retaliation to last week’s missile and drone attack on Israel by Iran.

By taking this action, Israel ignored strong pressure from many nations, especially the U.S. and Europe, to not retaliate to Iran’s missile/drone attack because this could further escalate tensions. Israel rejected this pressure and instead sent a message that it will not tolerate attacks on its territory by Iran and that it will never appease Iran.

An attack on Isfahan is significant because it is the location of Iran’s largest nuclear research complex, which employs about 3,000 scientists. According to the BBC, the Isfahan region also has major military infrastructure, including a large airbase, a major missile production complex, and several nuclear facilities.

This appeared to be a limited Israeli attack to demonstrate its ability to strike deep inside Iran. Isfahan was probably chosen because it has important and vulnerable nuclear facilities that Israel could destroy if it wanted to. Israel conducted this attack as a show of force that might not lead to further escalation and avoided civilian casualties.  We may know later today exactly what Israel attacked.

Israel’s decision to attack Iran reflected how seriously it took the April 13 missile/drone attack.

After 99% of approximately 350 drones and missiles fired by Iran on April 13 against Israel were shot down or malfunctioned, the Biden administration and other world leaders urged Israel to “exercise restraint” and not retaliate. These leaders argued that the Iranian attack was not a serious threat and Israeli leaders should therefore not risk a major war by striking back against Iran.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/blaming_israel_s_response_to_iran_is_the_classic_abuser_s_stance.html

After October 7, around the world (except amongst Hamas and its most open supporters), there was a moment of pity for Israel. However, once Israel stood up against her abuser, the pity ended, and the unprincipled victim shaming began. Although Iran seems, at least temporarily, to have backed down after Israel’s airstrike yesterday, the normal Iran enablers were immediately outraged that the Israeli worm dared turn.

Here’s the chronology: For decades, Iran has been funding Hamas and Hezbollah, which have engaged in non-step terrorist attacks from Hamas and rocket attacks from Hezbollah. It recently emerged that a general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”) helped mastermind October 7. Israel engaged in a targeted strike against the general who was meeting at an IRGC office in Syria.

Iran retaliated with a barrage of rockets, missiles, and drones, many aimed at Jerusalem. It was only because of Israel’s superb defensive systems that Iran’s strike was unsuccessful. Israel was able to protect her citizens, who suffered no casualties, along with her civilian and military infrastructure. Ironically, one of the things she protected was the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s most sacred sites and a target, intentional or not, of Iran’s strike.

Within minutes of Iran’s attack, those who fear Iran and those who hate Israel (not always the same people, but there’s lots of overlap), instantly urged Israel to suck it up and do nothing. The fact that she survived Iran’s strike, which was an act of war, was a “victory,” they said, and this was a message that came from the White House, the UN, and European leaders. Leftists and a handful of Republicans across the media and the internet chimed in. This tweet is representative:

That Israel’s meekly taking what Iran dished out would turn her into a sitting duck for other Iranian strikes was irrelevant to these urgings.

Israel, however, refused to accept the role of sitting duck. Last night, she launched an attack against Iran. It appears that she targeted myriad sites immediately adjacent to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The message was clear: We’ve chosen not to strike into Iran’s heart, but we can if we want to. Currently, it seems that Iran got the message—as bullies often do when their victims finally push back.

https://jinsa.org/tragic-mistakes-are-common-during-war/

Tragic mistakes happen in wars—particularly those fought in dense urban areas against adversaries who hide behind human shields—but they are not a reason to end conflicts before they are won. That is especially true when those wars are justified, fought by law-abiding, professional militaries, and waged again barbaric adversaries. Israel’s unfortunate, accidental strike that killed seven aid workers only shows how important it is that Israel finish the job against Hamas, not finish the war now.

Even though the advent of precision-guided munitions, GPS, satellite imagery, and other high-tech tools, couple with discussions of surgical strikes, can make modern warfare seem like its sterile, accurate, and infallible, as battlefield commanders we know otherwise. The reality of high-intensity warfare in a compressed battlefield is that commanders make rapid-fire decisions on sometimes imperfect information. The awful and brutal fact is that mistakes happen, even among the most advanced, law-abiding, and careful militaries in the world.

Indeed, in every conflict since the introduction of precision-guided munitions, the United States military has still made regrettable and tragic mistakes. In Operation Desert Storm, over 400 civilians were killed when the United States bombed what intelligence indicated was a command-and-control bunker but turned out to be an air-raid shelter. Rather than a Yugoslavian military target, in 1999 the United States mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

The margin for error has only grown smaller as the United States and our partners turned to fight adversaries that wear no uniform, respect no laws, and hide among civilians. In Afghanistan, for example, the United States mistakenly struck a hospital in Kunduz, believing it was harboring Taliban fighters.

Such mistakes are not a reflection on the evil character or intentions of the military that commits them. Instead, militaries should be judged not on whether they commit mistakes, but on the steps they take in the aftermath of such tragic incidents.

https://www.jns.org/us-rift-with-israel-emboldened-iran-to-attack-directly-analysts-say/

On April 14, Iran for the first time broke with its longstanding policy of attacking Israel only by proxy. The question is, why?

Analysts offer a variety of explanations, but all agree that Iran’s perception that the United States had distanced itself from Israel was a key driver.

While Iranian proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria did participate in Saturday night’s attack, the vast majority of the more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles launched at Israel came straight from Iranian territory.

“This is a very strange event. Iranian strategy is to send someone else to get killed,” said Eyal Pinko, a researcher and lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, who served for years in Israeli intelligence services.

Iran’s pretext for the attack was retaliation for the April 1 assassination of one of its generals, a targeted killing attributed to Israel. However, Pinko told JNS, “Iranian generals have been killed before. It doesn’t explain the change in doctrine.”

According to Pinko, “Iran perceived Israel as weak on several fronts, foremost among which is that it saw a significant decline in U.S. support.”

He noted the Biden administration’s growing criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas, culminating in America’s failure to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told JNS that there’s “no doubt” that Iran concluded that it could attack Israel directly without fear of U.S. reprisal.

“It’s the number one reason,” he said. “Iran calculated accurately that there would be huge American pressure on Israel not to respond.”

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/p/world-seeks-stability-israel-seeks?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_

“[Israel’s] leaders and people are forever being entreated to avoid escalation and to act proportionately. They are hectored, lectured and told to act responsibly. No other country in the world is required to behave in this way when it is attacked by states that want to wipe it off the face of the earth.”

So said a Telegraph editorial on April 14, the morning after Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel. The Telegraph’s retort was aimed at an instantaneous US and European reaction to the events of the early morning hours of the 14th—“Israel, it’s terrible that you should be attacked this way. Now, don’t do anything!”

An Israeli military retaliation to the attack would be seen, of course, as a threat to “stability”—than which, unfortunately, a worn-out, dissolute West sees no higher value. “Stability” means allowing Iran to continue spreading its tentacles throughout the Middle East, creating a ring of fire around Israel, arming, training, funding, and inciting its terror proxies, and marching along almost untrammeled toward nuclearization.

That approach is evident in the US–British very limited, ineffectual warfare on the Houthis’ assault on global shipping in the Red Sea. The unspoken rule is that Houthi targets alone get hit—but no targets on the soil of the Houthis’ sponsor, Iran. Even the Iranian spy ship in the Red Sea that helps guide the Houthis’ attacks is out of bounds. (Update: the ship is now reported to be heading back to Iran for fear of an Israeli strike.)

Worried European leaders indeed trooped to Israel this week to hector and lecture its leaders not to do anything in response to an unprecedented Iranian onslaught of hundreds of projectiles, including a swarm of 120 enormous ballistic missiles some of which were intended to destroy Israel’s Nevatim airbase.