Israel hits Iran with airstrikes in retaliation for prior missile attack

Israel hits Iran with airstrikes in retaliation for prior missile attack

Israel pounded Iran with a series of airstrikes early Saturday, saying it was targeting military facilities in retaliation for the barrage of ballistic missiles the Islamic Republic fired upon Israel earlier this month. Explosions could be heard in the Iranian capital, Tehran, though there was no immediate information on damage or casualties.

The attack could push the archenemies closer to all-out war at a time of spiraling violence across the Middle East, where militant groups backed by Iran — including Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon — are already at war with Israel.

The Israeli military said Saturday it had launched “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” and, according to two Israeli officials, it was not targeting nuclear or oil facilities. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the ongoing operation with the media.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 … including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a prerecorded video statement early Saturday. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

Sound of explosions heard

Initially, nuclear facilities and oil installations all had been seen as possible targets for Israel’s response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, but in mid-October the Biden administration believed it had won assurances from Israel that it would not hit such targets.

Iran’s state-run media acknowledged blasts could be heard, and said some of the sounds came from air defence systems around the city. 

But beyond a brief reference, Iranian state television offered no other details and even began showing what it described as live footage of men loading trucks at a vegetable market in Tehran in an attempt to downplay the assault. 

A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

People in Tehran could see what appeared to be tracer fire light up the sky as the blasts could be heard. Other footage showed what appeared to be surface-to-air missiles launching up to the sky, along with other detonations.

Iran closed the country’s airspace early Saturday, and flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed commercial airlines had broadly left the skies over Iran, and across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The White House said U.S. President Joe Biden had been briefed and would continue to receive updates.

In Syria, the state news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military official, reported that “barrages of missiles from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan and Lebanese territories targeted some military sites in the southern and central regions” of Syria early Saturday.

It said that Syria’s air defences had shot some of the missiles down. There was no immediate information on casualties.

Escalating regional violence

Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic post in Syria. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.

But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately said Iran had “made a big mistake.”

A forceful Israeli strike on Iran risks further entangling the U.S., which maintains a large troop presence in the Persian Gulf and has helped Israel defend itself against attacks by Iran and its proxies.

Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on the evening of Oct. 1, sending Israelis scrambling into bomb shelters but causing only minimal damage and a few injuries. Iran said the barrage was retaliation for attacks in recent months that killed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian military.

Blows against Hezbollah

Before Iran’s October attack, Israel had landed a series of devastating blows against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel near-daily for over a year — ever since the deadly Hamas attack against Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Dozens were killed and thousands wounded in September when pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded in two days of attacks attributed to Israel. A massive Israel airstrike the following week outside Beirut killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and several of his top commanders.

Israel then ratcheted up the pressure on Hezbollah by launching a ground invasion into southern Lebanon. More than a million Lebanese people have been displaced, and the death toll has risen sharply as airstrikes continue to hit in and around Beirut.

Israel has said it will continue to strike Hezbollah until it is safe for Israeli citizens displaced from their homes near the Lebanon border to return. Hezbollah has vowed to keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.

When Hamas and other militants attacked Israel last Oct. 7, they killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 hostages into Gaza. In response, Israel launched a devastating air and ground offensive against Hamas, and Netanyahu has vowed to keep it up until all of the hostages are freed. Some 100 remain and roughly a third are believed to be dead.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials who don’t delineate between civilians and combatants but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

The strike on Iran happened just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East where he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region.

Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation, said the U.S. was notified by Israel in advance of the strikes. They said there was no U.S. involvement in the operation.

Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:38:40 +0000

What North Korean boots on the ground in Russia could mean for Ukraine war

Until now, North Koreans in Russia were most commonly thought of as the grinding slave labourers who built soccer stadiums across the vast nation when the country hosted the 2018 World Cup.

But Vladimir Putin’s comments on Thursday at the end of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, appeared to have bestowed a new, elevated status on North Korea and especially its military — that of an important ally — with its soldiers potentially fighting side by side with Russians against Ukraine.

Putin did not explicitly acknowledge that there are now North Korean troops on the ground in Russia preparing to enter the war. But most observers are taking his non-denial in response to a journalist’s question about photographs taken by satellite as confirmation.

“Images are a serious thing. If there are images [of North Korean troops], then they reflect something,” said the Russian president.

He then added that the two nations had just signed and ratified a strategic agreement, and “what we will do and how we will do it is up to us.”

Ambiguous response

For more than a week after Ukrainian intelligence first raised the alarm that up to 12,000 North Korean troops were preparing to join the war, both American and Russia officials danced around the question, preferring ambiguity to openly acknowledging a significant escalation.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While both sides have relied heavily on weapons and ammunition supplied by allies, and used thousands of foreign mercenaries, this would be the first time that a foreign country has lent its ground troops to the fight.

Precisely what the North Koreans will be doing remains unclear. 

In a statement on Thursday, Ukraine’s main intelligence service indicated up to 3,000 personnel had already been sent to the Kursk area, where Ukraine captured hundreds of kilometres of Russian territory over the summer. 

Other video has surfaced purportedly showing North Korean soldiers receiving Russian military fatigues and gear at a base in the country’s far east.

“Twelve thousand troops could be only the beginning. This is a number that could increase and multiply many times,” said Alina Frolova, a former Ukrainian deputy minister of defence who’s now an analyst with the Center for Defence Strategies in Kyiv. 

“We don’t know the capability and quality of those forces, and while they may not be extremely effective, they can cause some trouble,” she told CBC News in an interview.

More than two and half years after Russia’s invasion, both sides are facing acute shortages of manpower.

U.S. estimates suggest more than 115,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, with as many as half a million injured. The same U.S. officials reportedly believe Ukrainian casualty figures are roughly half of Russian losses.

Russian tactics in Ukraine have increasingly been likened to a “meat grinder”, relying on enormous infantry assaults, rather than on mobility and technology, to try to take out Ukrainian positions. 

Huge army

North Korea is estimated to have one of the world’s largest militaries, and while it has not fought a war in decades, with 1.3 million soldiers in uniform it would appear to have a vast reservoir of manpower to lend to Russia.

Beyond Ukraine, the larger implications of the pact between Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s unpredictable dictator Kim Jong-un could have far-reaching implications. 

“Kim’s decision to send troops to Russia is not just based on immediate economic and military-technology considerations,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Korea Program in Washington, D.C.

“He cannot have taken the step of sending his own people to Russia as mercenaries unless he had a more strategic goal in mind.”

There’s been widespread speculation that Putin has offered to trade Russian technology — possibly even nuclear weapons know-how — in exchange for North Korean help, although there is no proof of that, said Minyoung Lee.

“We do not know what Putin promised, but one thing seems clear: since North Korea is now directly participating in Russia’s war, Kim can probably count on Russia’s military involvement in case of a military conflict on the Korean peninsula,” she told CBC News.

“This will obviously have a direct impact on the security landscape on and around the Korean peninsula.” 

In recent weeks, tensions between North and South Korea have soared once again, with Kim Jong-un’s regime claiming the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal poses a severe threat, thereby demanding the North step up its own arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Putin’s calculation

Samuel Greene, a Russia expert at King’s College London, says Putin himself may be unsure where the new pact between the two countries will lead. 

“I don’t think you can argue that he’s doing this because everything is going swimmingly right. He’s facing very real challenges,” Greene said. “He is doing it, I think, relatively tentatively. There is an experimental nature to this, and he and everybody else will learn as they proceed whether or not it works.”

While the reaction to the North Korean deployment within Ukraine has been one of alarm, the absence of a strong response from Ukraine’s partners has been notable, says Frolova.

“There is complete silence,” she said. “You need to react somehow, but there are no easy instruments you can use.”

Both North Korea and Russia are already heavily sanctioned by Western countries and NATO has ruled out sending ground troops to help Ukraine. In a social media post on the North Korean developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy underscored his frustration with the country’s key allies.

“If North Korea can intervene in a war in Europe, it’s obvious that there hasn’t been enough pressure on this regime,”  wrote Zelenskyy on X. “Aggressors must be stopped. We expect a firm, concrete response from the world. Hopefully, not just in words.”

There has been no indication that Western policies will change because of this latest escalation, with most nations issuing statements of condemnation but doing little else.

“Canada is gravely concerned that North Korean troops were deployed to Russia, which contravenes UN Security Council resolutions,” said a statement from Global Affairs.

American officials said if North Korean troops engage with Ukrainian forces, they would be “fair game.”

South Korea’s response

Perhaps the strongest reaction thus far has come from South Korea, whose officials are now openly musing about providing weapons and armaments to Ukraine. 

“The South Korean government keeps talking about ‘not sitting by idly’ and has hinted at the possibility of providing lethal weapons directly to Ukraine,” said Minyoung Lee. “But it has been saying this since the signing of the new [North Korea]-Russia treaty in June. This tells you that it is not easy for Seoul to take this decisive step, either.”

While South Korean companies do significant commercial business selling weapons, its government has historically been reluctant to supply weapons directly to countries at war.

Minyoung Lee says involving China may be the best approach for Ukraine’s allies.

“I think the best option the United States and the West have at this point is to weaken the North Korea-Russia alliance, perhaps by working through China to exert pressure on Russia.”

While the impact of North Korea’s ground forces remains to be seen, there is no doubt that its ongoing shipments of weapons and munitions to Russia have been substantial. Earlier this year, South Korea’s military said the North had shipped more than four million rounds of ammunition, effectively keeping Putin’s war machine going. 

In contrast, Western supplies of items such as artillery shells have been more limited. 

“We have received less than one million rounds from our partners,” said Frolova. 

While North Korea’s totalitarian regime is often mocked for being isolated and backwards in the West, Russians may be prone to see it in a new light, she said.

“For internal audiences, [using North Korean troops] is a plus, not a minus,” said Frolova. “It shows that Russia has partners and allies in this war against the West, and it increases their reputation.”

Published at Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:52:23 +0000