Iran attacks puts Israeli Rafah plans on ice, and what else?

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ER Editor: Although The Cradle takes its reporting from US sources, the titles of their pieces below tell us the neutering effect of the alleged Iranian attack. The reports are from yesterday and today.

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Displaced Palestinians who fled Khan Younis, sit outside makeshift shelters in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 4, 2023. (Photo credit: Mahmud HAMS / AFP)

Those plans were allegedly halted after Iran launched an attack involving some 300 missiles and drones toward Israel late Saturday. Most were intercepted by Israeli anti-missile systems, but several missiles successfully penetrated Israel’s vaunted defenses and hit a key military base and intelligence collection center.

Israel’s war cabinet spent Sunday and Monday debating a possible response to the Iranian attack, which was in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus two weeks ago, killing a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general.

CNN wrote that according to one Israeli official, “Israel remains determined to carry out a ground offensive in Rafah, although the timing of civilian evacuations and the coming ground offensive remains unclear at the moment.”

The Israeli military declined to comment.

IDF calls up two brigades to Gaza as Rafah operation looms

‘Gaza and the Rafah problem is taking a secondary phase now and Israel is going all out to take care of the Iranian problem’ Brig. Gen. (Res.) Hannan Geffen tells @GuyAz pic.twitter.com/MQ1rbcC33F

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) April 15, 2024

Netanyahu has publicly threatened to invade Rafah for months, claiming it is necessary to dismantle Hamas’s remaining fighting battalions. UN officials and aid workers have warned an invasion of the border city would result in a “bloodbath” due to the roughly 1.4 million civilians concentrated there, including many living in tents and with nowhere safe to flee.

Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed over 33,000 Palestinians and is widely viewed as genocide, is influencing the war cabinet’s discussions about a potential response to Iran’s attack.

Opening another front in the war with Iran would require moving attention and resources away from Gaza, where Israel seeks to defeat Hamas, ethnically cleanse the 2.3 million-strong indigenous Palestinian population, and establish Jewish colonies.

Source

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Israel to take ‘less aggressive’ approach to Iran response: Report

The US believes Israel may choose to target ‘Iranian proxies’ such as Hezbollah in Syria rather than directly attack Iranian territory

THE CRADLE NEWS DESK

Washington believes Israel’s response to Iran’s massive drone and missile strike will be “limited” and will focus on targets outside of Iranian territory, US officials said on 16 April.

Four US officials told NBC that they expect the Israeli response “to be limited in scope and most likely involve strikes against Iranian military forces and Iranian-backed proxies outside Iran.”

(Photo credit: Israeli army)

The assessment is based on talks between Israeli and US officials prior to Operation True Promise, which saw hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles target Israeli military sites late on 13 April and into the following morning.

“As Israel was preparing for a possible Iranian attack last week, Israeli officials briefed US officials about possible response options,” the officials added.

The officials emphasized, however, that they have not been informed about any final decision, and that Tel Aviv’s plans for a response may have shifted since the Iranian operation took place on late Saturday and early Sunday morning.

Israel had been debating what a potential retaliation to its strike on Iran’s consulate would look like last week, as well as possible Israeli responses to the retaliation – which “ranged from no military action to strikes inside Iran,” NBC said.

The US officials told the news outlet that Israel could use a “less aggressive option” given there were no serious casualties from Iran’s attack. They added that among these options are attacks on Syria. An attack on Syria would not target senior officials as the consulate strike did, but rather storage units or shipments holding weapons destined for Hezbollah, they said.

Israel has for years carried out strikes against Syria, aimed at targeting Iranian or Hezbollah interests in the country, or weapons shipments sent by the Islamic Republic to the Lebanese resistance. These attacks have done very little to stifle the flow of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah.

“The US does not intend to take part in the military response,” the officials confirmed. However, they expect Israel to inform Washington about response plans in advance.

Israel has publicly vowed to respond to the Iranian operation. Yet the magnitude and nature of its response has yet to be determined and is being debated by Israeli officials, according to Hebrew-language reports.

Source

Featured image source: https://iranpress.com/iran-s-top-cmdr–true-promise-operation-changed-equation-of-response-to-israel

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