Iran‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared that the country has the right to respond to Israeli airstrikes that hit Iranian military targets on Saturday local time.
The ministry condemned Israel’s strikes “against a number of military sites in Iran as a blatant violation of international law and the United Nations charter,” and its statement added, “based on the inherent right of self-defense, as also reflected in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, the Islamic Republic of Iran considers itself entitled and obliged to defend against acts of external aggression.”
Iranian media reported that two soldiers were killed in the Israeli attack. The first wave of airstrikes focused on Iran’s air defense system, and the second and third waves focused on missile and drone bases and weapons production sites, according to Axios.
Israel’s airstrikes came in response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack on Israel, in which the country fired about 180 ballistic missiles toward the Jewish State. Most of those were intercepted, some by U.S. forces in the region, but the attack threatened to kill hundreds of civilians.
Some hawkish Israeli leaders hoped to see a more significant response, including potentially going after Iran’s energy and/or oil infrastructure, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complied with the U.S. insistence to keep their retaliation proportional and not escalatory.
“We could and should have exacted a much heavier price from Iran,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said after the attack. “Iran is the head of the axis of evil and must pay a heavy price for its aggression.”
Had Israel’s response been more devastating, it could have escalated tensions in the region even further. Tehran could still respond to this attack, though Israel reportedly warned through intermediaries that an Iranian retaliation would incur a much harder Israeli response.
“The President and his national security team, of course, worked with the Israelis over recent weeks to encourage Israel to conduct a response that was targeted and proportional with low risk of civilian harm, and that appears to have been precisely what transpired this evening,” a senior Biden administration official said, adding that the president “encouraged the Prime Minister to design a response that served to deter further attacks against Israel while reducing risk of further escalation.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Friday as the attacks on Iran took place. The U.S. military deployed additional resources to Israel this month ahead of a possible Iranian response.
Iran has supported and trained proxy groups in the Middle East, Hamas included, with the purpose of fighting Israel so they could maintain plausible deniability and not cause a direct conflict with Israel. Instead, Israel and Iran have historically gone after one another through espionage and targeted assassinations.
The Biden administration has continuously, and sometimes unsuccessfully, sought to contain the war in the Middle East, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hamas’s devastating terrorist attack in southern Israel that resulted in the killing of roughly 1,200 people and the kidnapping of another 250 individuals.
The attack served, as then-Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar intended, as an inflection point that ignited the current conflict that is teetering on the brink of further escalation.
Israel declared war on Hamas and invaded Gaza to remove Hamas from power in the enclave and to destroy its military capabilities. After a year, Israeli forces have decimated Hamas’s senior leaders, its ranks, as well as much of the infrastructure there. The Gazan death toll is believed to be north of 40,000, and about half of them were civilians, according to Israeli officials. Hamas has spent its nearly two decades in power repurposing foreign aid to build its arsenal and a massive underground tunnel system that has allowed Hamas leaders to hide from Israeli forces.
Earlier this month, Israeli forces killed Sinwar, who was considered the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack. He had spent years planning and strategizing for the attack, going as far as to discourage fighting with the Israelis in the lead-up to it so they could give the Israelis the perception they did not want a conflict.
Israel is believed to have been behind the assassination of the head of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran, Iran, while in the country for the inauguration of the Islamic Republic’s new president.
U.S., Qatar, and Egypt have tried to negotiate a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas to end the war, release the roughly 100 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, force a withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a surge of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians. While the negotiations had been stalled due to Sinwar’s opposition, his death represents a new opportunity for the mediators, which they’re pursuing in the coming days, though his successor could hold his hardened stance.
Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and also has Iran’s backing, began attacking Israel a day after Hamas’s deadly attack a year ago. Hezbollah began launching thousands of rockets and missiles into northern Israel, and the Israelis evacuated more than 50,000 people from the area due to the concern that Hezbollah could carry out a cross-border raid similar to the one Hamas did.
Israel escalated their attacks on Hezbollah last month and decimated the group’s senior leaders, killing both Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his multiple possible successors. Israeli forces have also begun launching ground incursions into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, which had been viewed as Iran’s strongest proxy, has fought back, resulting in the deaths of several Israeli troops.
Hezbollah-fired drones have proven to be a difficult challenge for Israel’s air defense capabilities. A drone they fired last week hit Netanyahu’s home, though neither he nor his wife were there at the time.
The U.S. wants to see an end to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict as well, and U.S. officials have pointed to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war but was never fully implemented as the foundation for a cessation of hostilities.
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“Over the coming days, we are prepared to lead an effort to secure an end to the war in Lebanon through an agreement that allows civilians on both sides of the Blue Line to safely return to their homes. We are also prepared to lead an effort to finally achieve a ceasefire in Gaza together, with the return of hostages, which must happen without delay,” the senior U.S. administration official said.
The resolution called for Hezbollah to move north of the Litani River in Lebanon, which would prevent them from amassing along Israel’s border. If Hezbollah obliged to move north of the river, it would create an almost 20-mile buffer zone between them and Israel.