The seventh of October marked the first anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in Gaza, the spectacular jail break by the Palestinian resistance, which electrified the entire middle east and had ramifications far and wide. The Israeli zionists, stunned by this operation, responded in the only way they know, that is, by indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, killing unarmed civilian men, women, children and babies, which they have been doing non-stop since 8 October last year.
They have been flattening residential areas with 2,000lb bombs supplied by the USA and other imperialist countries, committing genocide. Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, universities, cultural centres, Unrwa buildings, water facilities and sewage systems have all been obliterated. Electricity, water, fuel and food have been cut off.
Imperialist media’s complicity in genocide
Faced with this genocide, and wilfully ignoring it, the political, ideological and journalistic representatives of imperialism have been mindlessly repeating ad nauseam the mantra that Israel has the right to defend itself. If someone sympathetic to the Palestinian resistance against occupation of their motherland ever manages to appear on bourgeois media, that person is bombarded with just one question: “Do you condemn Hamas for 7 October 2023?”
It never occurs to these mercenaries that the Palestinians have a right to resist the zionist occupation of their country, which has resulted in the expulsion of millions of people from their homes, and condemned them to eke out a miserable existence in refugee camps. In the case of Gaza, the people there are confined in the world’s largest open-air prison, which they cannot leave or enter without permission from the Israeli military, and where they are under a blockade from land, sea and air. This being the case, they have every right to resist – as did the French resistance against Nazi occupation during the second world war.
Continuation of the Nakba
The zionist occupiers, on the other hand, have no such right. Far from defending itself, Israel is engaged in a war of expansion and expulsion – a genocidal war of extermination and ethnic cleansing, a continuation of the ethnic cleansing which has been going on since 1948, if not earlier.
In fact, the zionists are quite open and blatant about their intention, which has been meticulously detailed by South Africa in its case against zionist genocide before the International Court of Justice. That is what led the ICJ to declare that there is a plausible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. The court has also declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land to be illegal under international law.
Mad delusions
Emboldened by his regime’s successes in its murderous campaign against the leaders of the resistance, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has laid claim to the whole of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and parts of Egypt and Saudi Arabia – without even a murmur of condemnation from Israel’s imperialist backers.
Instead, the USA has shipped 50,000 tons of weapons to Israel since October 2023 and given it $18bn in financial assistance. Israel is entirely dependent on US financial, diplomatic and military largesse. With bombs supplied by the USA, most of Gaza has been flattened, leaving behind 42m tons of rubble and rendering 2.3 million Palestinians homeless, as well as at least 43,000 dead.
The actual death toll will prove to be close to 186,000 after taking into account those buried under the rubble and the victims of the starvation and disease consequent upon the denial by the Israeli fascist regime of water, fuel, electricity, medicine and adequate food to its Palestinian victims. (Lancet looks at Gaza genocide, finds official figures a massive underestimate, 9 August 2024)
Imperialism dictates zionist conduct
No pressure has been brought to bear on Israel by its imperialist patrons to put an end to the continuing genocide. Nor is it nuder any pressure to agree to a permanent ceasefire or to take its army out of the Gaza enclave. A simple telephone call from US president Joe Biden could have accomplished that at any time in the last year. Instead, we are treated to the charade of ‘Genocide Joe’ appearing to call (for public consumption) for a ceasefire, only to be ‘frustrated’ by the ‘stubborn refusal’ of the Israeli prime minister to comply.
With this, the Simple Simons of the world (and not just the Simple Simons but also some highly intelligent and well-meaning commentators) have been brought to believe that it is Israel, backed by the Israel lobby in the USA, that controls US foreign policy and not – as is actually the case – the USA that funds, supports, and dictates to Israel, its attack dog in the middle east, whose role is to protect US economic and geopolitical interests in the region.
It is not the Israeli tail that wags the American dog. On the contrary, the USA dictates Israeli conduct and policy. Israel could not last beyond a few months without US financial, diplomatic and military support. The zionist outpost is by far the cheapest way for the USA to protect its interests in the region – ie, by using Israel as its proxy.
As for the ‘Israel lobby’ in the USA, it is an inextricable part of the country’s imperialist ruling class. That class, almost in its entirety, supports unreservedly whatever infamies Israel commits against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian people, among others.
Israel is the cheapest protection racket for safeguarding especially US interests in the middle east. It is not for nothing that Genocide Joe declared years ago that “if Israel did not exist, it would have to be invented”.
All the imperialist countries, particularly the USA, are totally complicit in the Gaza genocide and in Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. It is time working people grasped this truth, rather than being misled into believing that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing against the will, desire, and economic and geopolitical interests of the USA.
Sabotage of ceasefire talks and the zionist murder spree
At every stage of the present phase of the conflict, Israel has sabotaged, not without US backing, attempts at a ceasefire. On 28 July, ceasefire talks collapsed after Israel introduced new demands. On 30 July, Israel murdered Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukri in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
On 31 July, chief Hamas negotiator in ceasefire talks and hostage release Ismail Haniyeh was murdered through an Israeli strike on his hotel room in Tehran. Haniyeh had been staying as a guest of the Iranian government to attend the inauguration ceremony for the country’s new president.
On 17 September, thousands of weaponised pagers were detonated by agents of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, which left 40 people dead and another 2,000 injured. The attack was meant to strike at the heart of Hezbollah’s communications network, but in fact was an indiscriminate attack on large numbers of Lebanese unconnected with any military resistance.
On 18 September, in the follow-up to the above terrorist atrocity, hand-held radios used not only by the resistance but by many service providers in Lebanon, exploded in a second day of electronic device detonations, killing 25 and injuring 606 people.
UN human rights chief Volkev Türk condemned these assaults for their impact on civilians. Even former CIA chief Leon Panetta described the pager attacks as a form of terrorism, with “terror going into the supply chain”, booby-trapping everyday objects on a large scale. The true consequences of such indiscriminate actions will unfold over time.
On 19 September, the Israeli armed forces (IDF) stepped up bombing in Lebanon, shifting somewhat their focus from Gaza to the country’s northern border. On 20 September, Israel murdered Ibrahim Aqil, the founder of Hezbollah’s Radwan special operations force, in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
On 25 September, Hezbollah responded to these outrages by firing a missile for the first time at Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial centre. The missile landed very close to the Mossad headquarters.
Heinous murder of Nasrallah and the Iranian response
On 27 September, in a wave of strikes that flattened at least six buildings and killed one thousand civilians, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and some of his senior comrades were murdered. Also murdered was a senior member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Sayyid Nasrallah was a symbol of national liberation; a fighter for common humanity and decency and against colonialism, zionist racial supremacy and imperialism. The murder of this iconic figure, while being celebrated by the zionists and by the likes of Biden, Keir Starmer and other flunkeys of Anglo-American imperialism, was mourned and greeted with much grief and tears, not only in Lebanon but across the middle east and in many other parts of the world.
On 1 October, Israel announced the launch of a ground offensive into Lebanon. On the same day, in response to the outrageous murders of Haniyeh and Nasrallah, Iran launched a barrage of 180 missiles at Israel. Most of these missiles, evading Israel’s much-touted Iron Dome, Patriot missiles and other air defence systems such as David’s Sling and the Arqasemrow system, hit their targets. Much damage was caused to Israel’s largest airbase, Navatim, and several planes parked there. Another missile exploded 700m away from the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
The attack shook the Israeli political and military establishment to its foundations, for it clearly demonstrated Iran’s ability to hit back. Unlike the Israelis, who take the greatest pleasure in destroying human life on an industrial scale, the Iranians aim at military, intelligence and suchlike targets, going out of the way to avoid civilian casualties.
Israel has been considering launching retaliatory strikes on Iran; Iran in turn has promised to hit back – only this time much more fiercely. Biden, apparently has urged Israel to make a ‘proportional’ response and to avoid targeting Iranian nuclear sites or oil installations. He has, however, made it clear that the USA supports Israel’s military response, saying “Israel has every right to respond to vicious attacks on them, not just by Iranians but everyone from Hezbollah to Hamas.” (In rare visit to White House press briefing, Biden cautions Israel by Zolan Kanno-Youngs, New York Times, 4 October 2024)
On Sunday 13 October, the USA announced the deployment of Thaad (the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence anti-missile battery), along with 100 US military personnel, ahead of an expected strike by Israel on Iran and the latter’s retaliation.
Consequent upon Israeli attacks on Lebanon, over one million Lebanese have been displaced and about 2,000 killed. A huge number of buildings have been flattened and several villages in south Lebanon have been forcibly evacuated.
The same day, as IDF started its ground offensive against Lebanon, a Palestinian liberation fighter opened fire in a Tel Aviv suburb, killing six and injuring another nine.
All reactionaries are fools
Like all reactionary fools, the Israeli zionists and their imperialist masters believe that by murdering top leaders of the resistance they will succeed in putting an end to the resistance. Time will show that genocide and mass murder, far from extinguishing the bright flames of resistance against imperialism, will only result in starting prairie fires that will consume imperialism and its stooges.
Imperialism is on a downward trajectory, which is accelerating with each passing month. We are in a transition period between one world order that is fading away and another which is in the process of coming into being. No force on earth can stop this shifting of the social tectonic plates.
To murder Nasrallah and some of his close comrades, the IDF used 86 2,000lb bombs. In their smug arrogance, they convinced themselves that they had finished off Hezbollah forever. Yet within a few weeks the resistance had chosen his second in command, Naim Qassem, to be the movement’s fourth secretary-general.
Resistance continues its fight
Meanwhile, despite all Israeli boasts to the contrary, Hezbollah’s optic communications remain unaffected, as does it network of underground tunnels, missile sites and weapons depots.
Hezbollah has repelled several land operations by the IDF. In one ambush the resistance killed nine Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. Hypocrites of the G7 imperialist countries, having gloated over and expressed satisfaction at Nasrallah’s murder, have called for restraint and a ceasefire.
Within 72 hours of its incursion into Lebanon, Israel had murdered 50 medical personnel, bombed a mosque, and attacked a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli, killing several people. Among the dead was Hamas commander Saeed Abdullah Ali, a commander of the Qassem brigades who was killed alongside his family in the early hours of 5 October. A second Hamas leader, Mohamed Hussein al Looise, was killed in an air raid in the Beka’a valley.
Debunking Israeli boastful claims that the IDF had eliminated Hezbollah as a fighting force, the Lebanese resistance launched 222 projectiles at northern Israel on 4 October; and has continued to maintain that momentum.
Hezbollah has demonstrated that it can still strike at least 60km into Israel despite weeks of Israeli attacks on its commanders and its arsenal. On Sunday 13 October, a Hezbollah drone attack killed four IDF soldiers at a military base in the centre of Israel. The chief of the IDF was supposedly among the 70 soldiers in the canteen of the elite Golani brigade injured in this attack, with further reports claiming that he was killed. Israel has denied the claim.
It is important to note that Hezbollah has not yet used its full capacity. “It has been firing at around one-tenth of its estimated pre-war launching capacity, a few hundred rockets a day instead of as many as 2,000,” said Asaf Orion, a former Israeli general and head of strategy at the Israeli defence forces:
“Some of that gap is a choice by Hezbollah not to go full out, and some of it is due to degradation by the IDF. But Hezbollah has enough left to mount a strong operation,” said General Orion, adding that “Haifa and northern Israel are still on the receiving end of rocket and drone attacks almost every day.”
More than 20,000 rockets and missiles have been fired at Israel over the past year from Gaza and Lebanon alone according to official Israeli figures. “It is only a question of time before Israel starts to run out of interceptors and has to prioritise how they are deployed,” said Ehud Eilan, a former researcher at Israel’s ministry of defence. The zionist regime faces a looming shortage of interceptor missiles, and the USA is racing to help fill gaps in Israel’s protective shield.
Additionally, with the wars it is waging on several fronts, the USA’s ability to supply Israel is not limitless. It cannot continue to supply Ukraine and Israel at the same pace: “We are reaching a tipping point,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior US defence official with responsibility for the middle east.
“If Iran responds to an Israeli attack [with a massive air strike campaign], and Hezbollah joins in too, Israel’s defences will be stretched,” she said. (US troops arrive in Israel, The Telegraph, 15 October 2024)
Iranian leadership defies threats
Continued Israeli aggression, with its open designs on Iran, and the unreserved support given by US imperialism to Israel, is forcing Iran’s supreme leadership to reverse its earlier fatwa declaring the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons to be Haram (forbidden). Conditions have changed and, facing an existential threat, Iran is on the verge of deciding (if it has not already decided) to change its stance on nuclear weapons.
Since Israel is on a murder spree, targeting the leaders of all the countries and liberation movements that form the middle-eastern axis of resistance, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led the 4 October Friday prayers in Tehran to project defiant unity and strength in the face of these extreme threats. Millions of Iranians joined him. It is very rare for the ayatollah to take part in such an event. His last sermon was in 2020, following the murder of the legendary General Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s most revered commanders.
On the same day, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Aragchi landed in Beirut in a surprise visit intended to show solidarity with Lebanon and to deliver food and medicine to the victims of Israeli aggression.
Israeli intentions
Israel’s main target in Iran would be Iran’s energy infrastructure and its nuclear facilities. As to the latter, they are spread over several sites and buried deep underground. Israel would need US help and, even with American assistance, it may not be able to reach them. Besides, as Iran is a long way from Israel, its planes would need refuelling, which could only be done with US assistance.
On top of this, Israel would require permission from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf statelets to fly over their air space. If these stooges gave permission they would thereby become participants in Israel’s attack on Iran and thus become legitimate targets for the Iranian air force, which has the capacity to cause colossal damage to their energy infrastructure. Precisely for that reason, the Iranian foreign minister has been touring these countries and making them aware of the dangers inherent in their acceding to Israeli and American demands.
However, if the Gulf autocracies were to bow down to US pressure, Iran would be able to destroy their oil fields and refineries; it would probably close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. All this could, with the Gulf oil supply cut off, bring about a global economic meltdown, compared with which the depression of 1929 would seem like child’s play. Since the Israelis and their American masters are only too aware of all this, the unfolding events in the middle east will reveal how far they are prepared to go.
Iran is a hard nut to crack. Despite draconian sanctions, to which Iran has been subjected by imperialism for decades, it is a country with a strong industrial base and a powerful defence industry, especially in the area of missile and drone technology. It has also been recently supplied by Russia with S400 air defence systems, probably the best in the world for intercepting incoming missiles, as well as some state-of-the-art jamming devices. With Russia backing Iran while Israel has the support of the USA, the chances of direct confrontation between the USA and Russia cannot be discounted.
The twenty-third of September was the deadliest single day in Lebanon since that country’s civil war, with the Israeli air force bombing Beirut, Tyre and Harmel. Iranian ambassador Mojtaba Amani was among those injured. On 24 September, Israeli forces murdered Ibrahim Obeissie, head of Hezbollah’s missile division.
In response to this murderous campaign, Hezbollah fighters are firing 300 rockets a day, which are penetrating deeper into Israel than ever before. Its Qader medium-range missile can carry a 750kg warhead and hit targets at long distance.
Hezbollah fighters also used Fadi rockets for the first time. Named after a Hezbollah commander killed in 1987, whose brother was also murdered by the IDF in January of this year, these rockets have a range of 70-100km – a range greater than any rockets used by the Lebanese so far in the fighting that has taken place since October 2023. Hezbollah also claimed to have used its more powerful Fadi-3 rocket for the first time on 24 September.
Just by way of a warning to the zionists that if they murder the leaders of the resistance, they are not immune from similar attacks, a Hezbollah drone strike on 18 October hit Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s weekend residence. That this drone hit its target with such accuracy could only be because the drone had inbuilt image recognition, something which will worry the zionists sick. The drone flew through a window into one of the bedrooms. Netanyahu was not in at the time, something which would have been known to Hezbollah. Nevertheless, the attack served as a clear warning: we know where you are and you can expect a visit from us in the near future.
Ignoring the Israeli spin about its invasion of Lebanon, the actual distance covered by the IDF has rarely gone further than towns on the border and no territory has been held. Contrary to the claims made under duress by a kidnapped Lebanese before the cameras, the resistance has not fled the border and deadly skirmishes with the IDF are a daily occurrence, with five Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting only a few days ago. In fact, Israel is losing more soldiers in south Lebanon than the resistance.
Hezbollah has widened the scope of its operations, with drones striking IDF soldiers deep into Israeli territory, including, as mentioned above, an attack on a military base near Haifa on 13 October which killed four IDF soldiers, injuring another 70. Missiles weighing as much as three tons are being fired at Tel Aviv. Despite the assassination of Hezbollah’s top leadership, the organisation, its military command and its fighting capacity remain intact. The fairy tales about Hezbollah’s demise are just that – fairy tales.
Murders won’t extinguish the resistance
Just as the murder of Ismail Haniyeh did not put an end to the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation and genocide, so the murders of Hassan Nasrallah and his comrades have not put an end to the Lebanese resistance against Israeli aggression and Israeli designs on Lebanon.
Frustrated with its progress thus far, and mauled in daily fights in Lebanese border towns, Israel has doubled down and on 24 October sent a larger force. This larger force will fare no better than have previous exercises in attempting to subdue the Lebanese resistance. Israel’s only hope is to incite a civil war in Lebanon, but in the present-day conditions, this attempt is unlikely to succeed.
IDF returns to north Gaza
Turning to Palestine, on 16 October, Israel murdered Gaza’s resistance leader Yahya Sinwar. Hid death was the outcome of a clash between a routine IDF patrol and a chance resistance encounter in the southern Gaza city of Rafah – not some clever intelligence, despite Sinwar having been on the zionists’s ‘most wanted’ list for the last year.
Israel has intensified its terror bombing campaign in the West Bank, killing dozens of innocent people. As for Gaza, having previously declared that northern Gaza had been cleared of Palestinian resistance, the IDF finds that the liberation fighters are very much alive, fighting and inflicting casualties on the occupiers and regularly destroying Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles.
Recently, the IDF has returned to the north of Gaza and is busy subjecting the Palestinians there to starvation. The so-called ‘General’s plan’, created by former national security adviser Giora Eiland, calls for Israel to order civilians to leave north Gaza for other areas of the enclave and declare the north a closed military zone. Those who do not leave are to be considered military targets and totally cut off from supplies of food, water and medicine. As Israel’s assault on Gaza has been a failure so far, sheer desperation has driven Israel to try this plan as the last hope of the doomed.
This plan affects 400,000 people who have been ordered to leave for the south to a zone in al-Mawasi on the coast in southern Gaza. The evacuation order has been backed up by a sharp reduction in aid deliveries – less than a quarter of the amount delivered per day in September, which itself was totally inadequate.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), said that the UN had “not been allowed to provide any assistance including food” to northern Gaza since 30 September. Kamal Adwan hospital in the north Gaza town of Beit Lahia has had no food or medicine deliveries, said hospital director Abu Safiyeh.
Defying Israeli threats, the people of northern Gaza refuse to leave, knowing well that there is no safe place in Gaza for them to go to. Besides, they will most likely be blown to bits on their way to the promised ‘safety’ by Israeli bombers. And if they manage to reach the south and put up a tent to sleep under, recent experience has shown that they are only too likely to be burned alive under their plastic coverings by Israeli bombardment. (Israel ‘starting to implement’ north Gaza starvation plan, say rights groups by James Shotter, Neri Zilber and Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper Financial Times, 15 October 2024)
Zionists aim at total ethnic cleansing
Basically, the zionists want Gaza, as indeed the whole of Palestine, emptied of Palestinians. Their present actions are a continuation of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), and in pursuance of their mad dream of creating Eretz (greater) Israel. In the name of security, they have occupied the Syrian Golan Heights, the Lebanese Sheba farms, are now busy trying to occupy south Lebanon, and have designs on Jordan, Syria, Iraq, part of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But they won’t succeed, for in the memorable words of Karl Marx:
“If limits are to be fixed by military interests, there will be no end to claims, because every military line is necessarily faulty, and may be improved by annexing some more outlying territory; and, moreover, they can never be fixed finally and fairly, because they must be imposed by the conqueror upon the conquered and consequently carry within them the seed of fresh wars.” (The Civil War in France, 1871, Chapter 2)
By the very logic of its existence, Israel is bound to disappear. A colonialist, racist and reactionary tool of imperialism, founded on ethnic cleansing and stealing other people’s land, it has no long-term future. By its continuing genocidal activity and its wars of aggression, it is rousing the wrath of Palestinian and other middle-eastern people and hastening the day of its destruction.
Yahya Sinwar, an icon and a hero
Finally, a few words about the murder of Yahya Sinwar. His death was greeted with joy by the zionists and leaders of the tiny group of G7 imperialist countries. Matthew Miller, moronic and despicable spokesman of the US state department, said that Sinwar had been a brutal dictator who ruled Gaza with an iron fist, terrorised Israelis and Palestinians alike, and whose actions were responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians.
It is as if Sinwar had gone around killing 40,000 Palestinians instead of the non-stop year-long indiscriminate bombardment by Israel. Miller’s brainless and stupid assertion deserves to be treated with contempt; no-one possessing at least two brain cells would accept this assertion.
The truth is that Sinwar was a heroic figure who had dedicated his entire life to the cause of the liberation of the Palestinian people. He was a child of the refugee camps, his family having been expelled from its home to Gaza, and he served 22 years in an Israeli dungeon, during which time he learnt Hebrew – all the better to understand his enemy.
From his prison cell he is reported to have masterminded the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. In the prisoner swap that followed, he was one of the 1,100 Palestinians whom Israel was forced to release in return for Shalit’s return.
Precisely for that reason the IDF has been practising the so-called ‘Hannibal directive’, under which the IDF kills its own soldiers rather than let them be taken prisoner by the resistance. Half the Israelis who met their death on 7 October were killed by the IDF – a fact that was revealed by Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone, and about which Israel and its imperialist patrons maintain a deathly silence.
Israeli and imperialist media had been doing their best to portray Sinwar as a coward, hiding in tunnels to save his skin. The facts of his death have given lie to this malicious calumny. He was living in an apartment above ground, leading his men in combat against the zionist murder squads known as the IDF. At the time of his death he was carrying an AK47 and operating alongside two other fighters.
Having been hit by shells from an Israeli tank, the two others were killed and Sinwar was badly injured. Sitting wounded on a chair in an apartment room, he threw two hand grenades at two IDF soldiers who came in. When a drone made its way towards him, he attempted to hit it with an ordinary stick, the only ‘weapon’ left to hand. He was finally killed by a shell from an IDF tank.
His martyrdom, the bravery with which he faced his death in his last few moments, were captured by an IDF camera on a film that the zionist military released to the public in its moment of exhilaration at having killed a figure like Sinwar. The impression on the public was not quite what his murderers had expected. As a result, the footage was immediately deleted from Israeli official sites, but of course, it was too late. The damage was done.
The image of Sinwar dying such a heroic death electrified not only Palestinians but also the wider middle east and far beyond. All people on the right side of history mourn his death and celebrate his life. He has become an iconic figure who is bound to inspire Palestinian youth to carry on the fight for which he lived, and for which he died. He will live long in people’s memory, while his denigrators, the despicable Millers and their ilk, will be deposited in the dustbin of history with effortless ease.
Glory to Hassan Nasrallah!
Glory to Yahya Sinwar!
Death to imperialism!
Death to zionism!
Victory to the resistance!
Postscript
As we go to press, the news has come through that Israel has launched air strikes on Iran, including on targets in Tehran, and has claimed to have struck military facilities such as missile manufacturing plants and air defences in the early hours of Saturday 26 October.
Iranian defence headquarters said that Israel targeted military bases in Tehran as well as in the southwestern province of Khuzestan and western province of Ilhan, adding that Iranian air defence systems “successfully confronted the aggression” and that there had been “limited damage” at some sites.
Iran’s foreign ministry called the strikes a “blatant violation of international law”, adding that the republic “considers it its right and duty to exercise legitimate self-defence against foreign acts of aggression”.
Many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, condemned Israel’s attack as a violation of international law.
A sense of normality prevailed in Iran after the Israeli strike, with state television broadcasting images of various cities and towns returning to routine activities on Saturday morning. The sports ministry announced that scheduled events would proceed as planned, while privately-owned businesses opened and schools welcomed students.
All this would appear to indicate that the attack was by no means the devastating response Israel had been threatening after Iran’s 1 October attack on Israel. Clearly the zionists have been sobered by Iran’s military capabilities since the 1 October Iranian attack.
