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- cross-posted to:
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On 5 March, a post appeared on the X account of Iran’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, managed by his staff after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on 28 February. The tweet featured a stark piece of propaganda: a gleaming, oversized missile arcing across the sky as a city below is engulfed in flames. The caption read: “Khorramshahr moments are on the horizon.”
The Khorramshahr missile, Iran’s most advanced ballistic missile, is believed to be capable of carrying a cluster warhead dispersing up to 80 submunitions. Since that post, it has come to loom large in Israeli threat assessments, a persistent concern for a country equipped with a multi-layered missile defence system that is widely regarded as the world’s most sophisticated.
The latest attack using cluster munitions occurred on Sunday, when an Iranian ballistic missile struck central Israel, injuring 15 people.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, roughly half of the missiles launched from Iran since the escalation have carried cluster warheads.
The Guardian, which reviewed the impact of dozens of Iranian strikes alongside statements from Israeli officials, has identified at least 19 ballistic missiles carrying cluster warheads that penetrated Israeli airspace and struck urban areas since the beginning of the war with Iran on 28 February. Those attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, reflecting a broader shift in Iran’s tactics that appears to have exposed a vulnerability in Israel’s air defences. Since the start of the war, Iran’s cluster munitions – which disperse dozens of bomblets mid-air – have tested Israel’s highly advanced, multi-tier missile defence network, including Iron Dome, which is designed to counter threats across ranges, altitudes and speeds, exposing gaps that interception alone has struggled to close.
But apparently, Israel does not come a knockin’ as long as they don’t initiate the hostilities. They attacked Israel in 2023 as a sign of support for the attack from Hamas. They still have the goal of destroying Israel and creating an Islamic state instead. Jordan and Egypt accepted that they have a jewish state (with all the history), they don’t attack them and they don’t get attacked in return. This last concept seems to be something that Hezbollah struggles with on a fundamental level. They feel like they should be allowed to support and partake in the destruction of Israel themselves as much as they want, but any single missile flying back is an absolute breach of human rights and international law…
Shebaa Farms and Syrian territory (you can add the Golan Heights as well, sixty years ago) are interesting to mention.
For starters, the Shebaa Farms area was contested between Syria and Lebanon even without Israel. You could say that it was demographically part of Lebanon that was ‘seized’ by Syria through lobbying in much the same way as large parts of Palestine were ‘seized’ by Israel in the partition plan for Palestine. Sure you could say that it should belong to either of those two and not Israel, but then what are you basing everything off anyway?
Secondly, there’s a disparity between what we were taught as children in that there are fixed borders between countries where you see a sign and people speak a different language, have different licence plates etc. and people get along and that’s how things are and always will be… And reality where countries were shaped through wars and natural boundaries.
If your enemy has attacked you twice from an advantageous hillside position and you manage to beat them back, sometimes with great losses, it might not be unwise to take those hills from them. It might be advantageous to beat them back behind a river and keep your side occupied. First as a buffer zone, and then after a few years you have a castle, fields, a village etc. . Of course I don’t know which country you’re from but if you study the history of how its borders were formed, there’s a big chance they are the result of the same violent reasons that you now feel are in breach of you childish view (meant in the positive sense - see above) that taking that hill or river bank are capital sins.
You’re a terrible human being and I hope a fascist throws you into a concentration camp. Goodbye.
I think you’re a terrible human being by choosing to take the easy route and not trying to understand these conflicts.
I hope you live a happy life and the world gets better