Israel said it has launched a series of strikes against Iran that included dozens of military targets, including the country’s nuclear program, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The IDF said the operation, titled “Rising Lion,” comes after intelligence identified that Iran has “significantly advanced towards obtaining a nuclear weapon,” alleging this capability would allow them to act against Israel.
As if the world is not dangerous enough and this happens? Why now? Why not a week or month or year ago?
Is this as scary as it feels? Cuz it feels scary. Iran will want to retaliate.
ETA: I really worry how Trump will want to respond. He loves this kind of chaos. It is nothing but an opportunity for him.
Israel and Iran have been at war for decades. This doesn’t change anything. Aside from, as Israel says, possibly setting back Iran’s nuclear program, which is a net win.
You were the one bringing up how trump will react, not me. That’s domestic politics. He sure as hell doesn’t care about international relations. Everything he does is about playing to his base here.
Seems like Israel really weakened Iran over the previous year, such as taking out Hezbollah (and their missiles), Hamas, the pager attack, and a bunch of Republican Guard leaders. I think the International Atomic Energy Agency just released a report condemning Iran’s conduct in regard to their nuclear program and I think the recent negotiations went badly.
What is “domestic” about that? Buffoon though Trump may be he is still the president and has a role to play in this. Not least that he is Commander-in-Chief of our whole military.
Interesting to see that thus far the US has noped out of the conflict. That makes me wonder what the thinking was in Israel. Probably along the lines of “Trump wants to make a deal with Iran? Like his trade deals that don’t actually exist?” Instead of waiting two weeks for Trump to announce he singlehandedly solved the conflict while actually doing nothing, Israel decided to just go ahead and strike now.
Is there any good info on why now in particular? I am getting a hint of “Wag the Dog” from this but that could be just my disdain for Netanyahu talking. Seems like Iran has been one day away from getting The Bomb for the past twenty years or so.
I don’t think he cares about any of it anymore. Remember, he promised to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and make a deal with Iran as soon as he took office. It was going to be easy! He was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize! Now Netanyahu and Putin aren’t paying any attention to him and Iran isn’t interested in talking either. He can never admit he failed so he will just wash his hands of it all and pretend none of that matters in his goal to MAGA. I hope Little Marco is sleeping well.
Directly, after they were found not to be in compliance by the UN, Iran announced yesterday that they were going to begin enriching uranium again, and raw materials are the limiting factor to nuclear weapons production. So “now” at least makes sense as a response to those two linked developments.
Indirectly, the few years—in particular after the collapse of the previous nuclear deal—Israeli-Arab relations have been marked by the countries of the GCC being fairly open about their belief that, between Israel and Iran, Iran is the significantly greater threat.
That has obviously been strained by the ongoing war in Gaza, but you can see in Netanyahu’s claim that “in defending ourselves, we also defend others. We defend our Arab neighbors” that, yes, I would imagine he sees it as an opportunity to remind some of those neighbors why they were previously normalizing relations.
Keep up, will you? That was the case until April 13 2024, when Iran launched hundreds of munitions from its soil to Israel’s. After that, all bets were off.
So it didn’t start with Iran launching hundreds of munitions from its soil to Israel’s on April 13. It started with an attack on the Iranian consulate annex building on April 1st. It’s right there in your cite.
Also from your link:
It was a limited response from Iran targeting military targets.
You can argue whether or not the attack on the Iranian consulate annex building was justified or not. But it’s clear that this is what prompted the Iranian response. It didn’t come out of nowhere.
I’m not saying it came out of nowhere. I said that it was the first time that the two countries went head to head - with attacks from one country’s soil onto the other country’s soil. That on April 13 2024 it stopped being a proxy war and became a direct conflict.