Iran fired ballistic missiles into Israel Sunday in retaliation for the latest IDF attack on Dahiya, where at least two people were killed in residential buildings struck by the Israeli military.
The IDF said it targeted Hezbollah command posts. Civilians in the area weren’t warned of the impending strikes.
Officials in Tehran described Sunday’s attack on the Beirut suburb as a last straw following a weeks-long Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah’s power center and an expanding IDF occupation of border territory.
The Iranian missile barrage counted as the most significant escalation since the establishment of an tenuous truce, which at least spared Iran direct attacks while on-again, off-again discussions to end the war unfolded with the help of intermediaries in Islamabad, Cairo and Muscat.
As of this writing, all of the projectiles launched by Iran against Israel were intercepted. No one was killed in the initial, limited volley, and air raid sirens went quiet after about 45 minutes.
Donald Trump has repeatedly beseeched Benjamin Netanyahu to pause, dial down or at least scale back the IDF’s siege in Lebanon, to no obvious avail.
Lebanon’s government (of which Hezbollah’s a part) and its official state military are powerless to impose the ceasefire on Hezbollah, even in its dilapidated state. Israel uses every rocket attack as an excuse to conduct more airstrikes, which in turn prompt more rocket attacks giving Netanyahu more ostensible “evidence” to justify the occupation.
Earlier this month, Bagher Ghalibaf warned that “if the Israeli aggression against Lebanon continues,” Iran will be forced “not only [to] halt the path of negotiations” but to engage in “direct confrontation with the enemy.” On Sunday, he blamed Trump for being complicit in Israel’s refusal to observe the terms of the April ceasefire.
“[The US is] neither committed to a ceasefire nor believe[s] in dialogue [as] demonstrat[ed] through the naval blockade and violation of agreements regarding Lebanon,” Ghalibaf said, accusing The White House of giving Netanyahu a “green light.” American bases in the region, he went on, are “legitimate targets.”
Sunday’s theatrics were the latest in a series of setbacks to the peace process. The US struck coastal sites in Iran on at least three occasions in recent weeks, and the IRGC retaliated with attacks on infrastructure and US military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Trump, who reportedly told aides he doesn’t intend to resume bombing Iran unless US servicemembers are killed, played down Sunday’s drama. “You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough,” he said, when asked about the fireworks by a reporter from Fox News. “Now get back to the table and make a deal.”
For their part, the Guards reminded Trump that Iran’s “acceptance of the ceasefire [in] April was conditional on a ceasefire on all fronts.” If Israeli aggression in Lebanon continues, the same statement said, “our responses will be broader.”
