Quasis

Miscalculation Led to Escalation in Clash Between Israel and Iran

Israeli officials say they didn’t see a strike on a high-level Iranian target in Syria as a provocation, and did not give Washington a heads-up about it until right before it happened.

“Israeli officials”, you need an IQ test, a lie-detector test, and need to get your calculator fixed. Under international law you attacked sovereign Iranian territory when you hit the Iranian embassy in Syria. Under international law it was the same as you hitting Tehran. The same week two South American countries broke diplomatic relations when the host country invaded the embassy of the guest country to arrest a person.

                                   Captioned, The Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, a day after an airstrike by Israel. What, did you calculate that as a "slap", Iz?
 

Israel was mere moments away from an airstrike on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders at Iran’s embassy complex in Syria when it told the United States what was about to happen.

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 The Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed seven Iranian officers, three of them generals, including [Mohammad Reza] Zahedi. In the past, Israel had repeatedly killed Iranian fighters, commanders and nuclear scientists, but no single strike had wiped out so much of Iran’s military leadership.

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Israel’s closest ally had just been caught off guard.

Aides quickly alerted [the Biden national security team]…and others, who saw that the strike could have serious consequences, a U.S. official said.

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...the Israeli strike in Damascus. Not only did the Israelis wait until the last minute to give word of it to the United States, but when they did so, it was a relatively low-level notification, U.S. officials said. Nor...any indication how sensitive the target...

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The Israelis had badly miscalculated, thinking that Iran would not react strongly, according to multiple American officials who were involved in high-level discussions after the attack, a view shared by a senior Israeli official. On Saturday, Iran launched a retaliatory barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel — an unexpectedly large-scale response, if one that did minimal damage.

They gave you so much warning it could have been their attack plans with targets color-coded. It was not unexpected. Who cares that there were 300 projectiles fired when there was "minimal damage" and no deaths? How many Iranians did you kill in your strike that pancaked sovereign Iranian territory in Syria, was it eight? It was a non-zero number greater than one.

…the unwritten rules of engagement in the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran have changed drastically in recent months, making it harder than ever for each side to gauge the other’s intentions and reactions.

Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel…there has been escalation after escalation and miscalculation after miscalculation, raising fears of a retribution cycle that could potentially become an all-out war.

 

 Even after it became clear that Iran would retaliate, U.S. and Israeli officials initially thought the scale of the response would be fairly limited, before scrambling to revise their assessment again and again. ...

It WAS fairly limited. Israel wants to attack Iran, that is what this is about. Israel wants a broader war, Armageddon, that's what this is.

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“We are in a situation where basically everybody can claim victory,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “Iran can say that it took revenge, Israel can say it defeated the Iranian attack and the United States can say it successfully deterred Iran and defended Israel.

That is EXACTLY correct. As is this:

“If we get into another round of tit for tat, it can easily spiral out of control, not just for Iran and Israel, but for the rest of the region and the entire world.”

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About a week beforehand, on March 22, Israel’s war Cabinet approved the operation, according to internal Israeli defense records...

Those records also outlined the range of responses from Iran that the Israeli government expected, among them small-scale attacks by proxies and a small-scale attack from Iran. None of the assessments predicted the ferocity of the Iranian response that actually occurred.

To characterize Iran's response, which did virtually no damage and killed no one as "ferocious"--that is Israeli propaganda.

From the day of the strike, Iran vowed retaliation, both publicly and through diplomatic channels. But it also sent messages privately that it did not want outright war with Israel — and even less so with the United States — and it waited 12 days to attack.

All true. ALL true. There was nothing "unexpected".

U.S. officials found themselves in an... uncomfortable position: They had been 1) kept in the dark...by...Israel,[2) until the last moment] even as Iran...3) telegraphed its intentions 4) well in advance. 

5) Israel attacked sovereign Iranian territory, destroying a structure and killing several people. I saw with my own eyes an official Iranian tweet quoting, correctly, international law on this point. 

6) Israel was prepared--how could they not be! I also read a quote, which I believe I posted here, from Israel's Defense Minister, assuring the public that Israel was prepared and that it would take "several hours" for the drones and missiles to reach Israel.

Those points deserved the separate enumeration. The contrast is stark. It is insulting to me as an American to hear my government saying that Iran's response was "unexpected" and that it was "ferocious". Iran's retaliatory strike was under-proportionate to Israel's.

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Turkey, relaying an Iranian message, told the United States that Iran’s attack would be proportionate to the Damascus strike, according to a Turkish diplomatic source. Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, told state television the day after the Iranian barrage that Iran had given its neighbors 72 hours’ notice of the attack, although the specifics of that warning are unclear.

Israeli officials say that, thanks in part to international cooperation, they had a good idea in advance of Iran’s targets and weapons. 

Insert shoulder shrug icon. You had no right to expect this level of granular detail in the warnings. You attacked sovereign Iranian territory, leveling a building, killing seven, three generals, and more of the Iranian military leadership than you ever had before in a single strike. Now you want revenge for a slap that did next to no damage and killed no one?! You're the bad actor here, Iz, NOT Iran.

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The Iranian government went on an unusually open and broad diplomatic campaign, spreading the word that it saw the attack as a violation of its sovereignty that required retaliation. The government publicized that it was exchanging messages with the United States and that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian was speaking with representatives of countries in the region, high-level European officials and leaders of the United Nations.

On April 7, Abdollahian met in Muscat, Oman, with his Omani counterpart, Badr Albusaidi. Oman is one of the main intermediaries between Iran and the West. The Iranian message at that meeting, according to a diplomat briefed on it, was that Iran had to strike back but that it would keep its attack contained, and that it was not seeking a regional war.

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...Iran’s show of force was significant, but Israel, the United States and other allies intercepted nearly all of the missiles and drones. The few that reached their targets had little effect. Iranian officials say the attack was designed to inflict limited damage.

That's right! So drop the "unexpected", "ferocious" and "significant". How many projectiles would have been "insignificant"? One? Ten? Two hundred? 

Initially, Israel’s military and intelligence services expected Iran to launch no more than 10 surface-to-surface missiles at Israel...By the middle of last week, they realized Iran had something much bigger in mind, and the Israelis increased their estimate to 60 to 70...

Okay. So initially 9, no prob. 60-70, would that have been okay? Do you want to attack Iranian sovereign territory again because your calculators were wrong?

Iran played a shell game, nerving Israel and allies with quantity when there was no quality, no "significant" intent to harm, nor realized harm, under any of the shells.

U.S. officials have been telling Israeli leaders to see their successful defense as a victory, 

I disagree that that is what we should be telling Israel. We should be telling Israel that Iran demonstrated its bona fides as a responsible nation in not overreacting, in fact, in under-reacting. We should be telling Israel to see this for what it was, a "show" of force "designed" by Iran "to inflict limited damage." In short, that it was Iran's victory, and a victory for peace.

suggesting that little or no further reply is needed. But despite international calls for deescalation, Israeli officials argue that Iran’s attack requires yet another response, which Iran says it would answer with still more force, making the situation more volatile.

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At 3 a.m. [following the Iranian show response], the Swiss ambassador in Tehran was summoned again — not to the Foreign Ministry, the usual practice, but to a Revolutionary Guard base, according to an Iranian and a U.S. official. She was asked to convey a message that the United States should stay out of the fight, and that if Israel retaliated, Iran would strike again, harder and without warning.

Iran cast its barrage against Israel as a measured, justified act that should not lead to escalation.

“We carried out a limited operation, at the same level and proportion to the evil actions of the Zionist regime,” Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guard, said on state television. “These operations could have been a lot larger.”

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“The president urged the prime minister to think about what that success says all by itself to the rest of the region,” Kirby said Monday.

But in interviews, Israeli officials described the attack in far more dire terms, in part because of its sheer scale. They emphasized that this was a sovereign nation, from its own soil, attacking Israel directly, and not through proxies abroad.

The NERVE! Israel, "a sovereign nation," "from its own soil", "directly" attacked another sovereign nation, Iran, on its soil! smh