Nuclear Iran

[Jimbuna]

Houthi leader threatens response to Israeli airstrikes on Yemen's Hodeidah

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Houthi response to Israeli airstrikes near Yemen's Hodeidah is coming, the Iran-backed group's leader declared in a televised speech on Thursday.

Israeli fighter jets struck Houthi military targets near Yemen's port of Hodeidah on Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 87, a day after a Houthi drone hit Israeli economic hub Tel Aviv.

"The response is inevitable," Abdulmalik al-Houthi said.

The group's attacks on Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza will continue and not be deterred by the Israeli airstrikes, he added.

"Everything that happens from the side of the Israeli enemy will be more incentive for revenge," al-Houthi said.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...0db624b0a&ei=9

[Jimbuna]

Fears Iran will have to act in revenge - as next step could spark all-out war

The targeting of two such senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders within such a small time period is a massive escalation and takes the Middle East to the brink of a regional war.

But it is the geography of the death of Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in an apartment inside Tehran that is most severe in crossing all of the usual red-lines.

His assassination inside the Iranian capital crudely shunts tensions way beyond a bloody localised conflict in Gaza and cross-border rocket attacks on the Israel Lebanon border.

Not only was Haniyeh playing a pivotal role in negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire but he was also a guest of Iran’s and perhaps regarded as untouchable by the regime.

The surprise strike came just after Mr Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran's new President in Tehran and will likely spark a direct retaliation from Iran.
It was extremely risky, daring and carried a message telling Iran’s leaders “we can get to you,” as well as demonstrating enormous skill in intelligence gathering and planning.

But the situation is now so serious that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed revenge on Israel and claims it has "prepared a harsh punishment for itself.”

Iran will have to act in revenge, in order to maintain credibility in the region and depending on how severe that is, the next step could spark all-out war.

Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp has to maintain credibility with its powerful proxy force Hezbollah in Lebanon and beyond by avenging Haniyeh’s death.

Israel’s air defences and troops on the border with Lebanon, over which thousands of Hezbollah fighters are ready for battle are now on extremely high-alert for a reaction.

Israel and Iran had an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other's soil in April after Israel hit Iran's embassy in Damascus, but until now that aggression has been on hold.

Locally Hamas could pull out of negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the war in Gaza, which was making progress.

And the killing could enflame already heightening tensions between Israel and Iran's powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah following the weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Tensions were already ramped up hours before the Tehran strike when Israel carried out a rare strike in Beirut killing the Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur.

If he is indeed dead that was also a major body blow as he was the right hand man of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, sometimes dubbed the “Shia bin Laden.”

There have been fears of an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon to battle Hezbollah and further strikes - but Israel may have calculated on the two major assassinations instead.

As a violent and decisive gesture both killings are enormous in ramping up regional tensions and the next few days could see a regional war breaking out.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...124ce862&ei=12

[Skybird]

The bias in tone of most Western media is unmistakable.

[mapuc]

The next question must be:

How much involved will USA get ? If there should be a regional war in the Middle East.

Markus

[Jimbuna]

What's your guesstimation Markus?

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

What's your guesstimation Markus?

I say only partial involved as they were last time when Iran, Houthi and Hezbollah fired rocket and missiles against Israel. I don't see a full engagement by the Americans Meaning a full scale war between Iran and USA.

Iraq, Syria and Lebanon will take active part from start on beside Iran.

Markus

[mapuc]

Markus

[Jimbuna]

How Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah choose to retaliate to latest airstrikes is pivotal

The assassination inside Iran of the political leader of Hamas - an attack that Iranian and Gaza officials have blamed on Israel - risks turning a decades-old shadow war between Tehran and Tel Aviv into full-scale open conflict.

Adding to the stakes is the fact that the operation happened while Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian president - a significant security failure.

It also came just hours after Israel on Tuesday launched - and publicly declared what it had done - an airstrike against a top commander of another Iran-linked militant group, Hezbollah, in a suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, a second flashpoint.

By contrast, the Israeli authorities have stayed silent about the killing in a strike of the even higher-profile Hamas target.

But this is in keeping with a long-standing tactic of deniable warfare conducted by the Israeli military and security services against Iran and its proxies.

Hamas, a militant group in Gaza that is backed by Iran, said in a statement its political leader was killed during a "raid" on his residence in the Iranian capital.

Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has already vowed a "harsh and painful response".

Aware of the scale of destruction that all-out fighting would inflict on the Middle East, Iran and Israel had in the past conducted murky assassinations, cyber attacks, sabotage and other forms of hostilities against each other that deliberately lie under the threshold of what could be considered a declaration of war.

As part of this strategy, Tehran built a network of proxy forces that it uses to build influence in the region and attack Israel and its allies.

These proxies include Hamas in Gaza, the much larger Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, and the Houthi militia in Yemen as well as militias in Iraq and Syria.

For Israel, its military has repeatedly struck targets linked to Iran across the region - often not publicly claiming responsibility - as well as carrying out assassinations such as the killing in November 2020 of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist.
https://news.sky.com/story/how-iran-...votal-13188133

[Dargo]

Turkish Airlines postpones Friday night flights to Iran

Turkish Airlines postponed its flights to Iran on Friday night due to tensions between Israel and Iran, Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency reported, without specifying its source. It said flights planned to different cities in Iran would resume starting Saturday morning.

[Otto Harkaman]

Interesting to watch flight patterns on Flightradar24
https://www.flightradar24.com

[Dargo]

More airlines have started to avoid the airspace over Iran and Lebanon. Opsgroup, an organisation whose 800 members share affiliated information on air traffic risks, advises not only to avoid Iranian airspace, but also to stay away over Iraq. According to the website Flightradar, Singapore Airlines, Taiwan's EVA Air and China Airlines already appear to be flying around Iran on flights to Amsterdam since today.

US Defense Secretary orders navy cruisers, destroyers and an additional fighter squadron to the Middle East, Pentagon https://www.defense.gov/News/Release...osture-in-the/

[Jimbuna]

US to boost military presence in Mideast, sending fighter jet squadron and keeping carrier in region

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will move a fighter jet squadron to the Middle East and maintain an aircraft carrier in the region, the Pentagon said Friday, beefing up the American military presence to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and safeguard U.S. troops.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the European and Middle East regions and is taking steps to send more land-based ballistic missile defense weapons there, the Pentagon said in a statement Friday evening.

The shifts make good on a promise President Joe Biden made to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a call Thursday afternoon, Biden discussed new U.S. military deployments to protect against possible attacks from ballistic missiles and drones, according to the White House. In April, U.S. forces intercepted dozens of missiles and drones fired by Iran against Israel and helped down nearly all of them.
https://apnews.com/article/us-milita...26c60dbaebedb3

[Jimbuna]

US military gears up for Iran’s revenge for Hamas leader’s assassination

The United States has sent warships and fighter jets to the Middle East as it prepares for a major Iranian attack against Israel over the assassination of Hamas’s political leader.

A US aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln is being transferred to the region to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Pentagon officials said.

It emerged on Saturday that Iran has arrested two dozen people, including intelligence officers, as it hunts down the intelligence leak which led to Israel killing Ismail Haniyeh on a visit to Tehran.

The arrests were made at the military-run guesthouse in Tehran where Haniyeh was assassinated, sources told the New York Times.

Staff and army officials were also arrested during the raid, which is seen as an attempt to compensate for the humiliating security failure.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack on Haniyeh, but has a long history of being able to assassinate its enemies overseas.

The attack was particularly embarrassing for Tehran as it took place at a heavily guarded compound, hours after Haniyeh attended the swearing-in ceremony of the new Iranian president.

The Telegraph previously revealed that Mossad used Iranian agents to plant bombs in three rooms of the compound where the Hamas leader was staying.

An official from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said: “They [investigators] are now certain that Mossad hired agents from the Ansar al-Mahdi protection unit,” referring to an IRGC unit.

He added: “Upon further investigation, they discovered additional explosive devices in two other rooms.”

Another IRGC official said: “This is a humiliation for Iran and a huge security breach.”

The disclosure suggests that the Revolutionary Guard, which is sworn to protect Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has been deeply infiltrated by Israeli intelligence operatives.

Experts say the assassination is potentially fatal for the stability of the Iranian regime as it shows it cannot protect its allies on home soil.

“The perception that Iran can neither protect its homeland nor its key allies could be fatal for the Iranian regime, because it basically signals to its foes that if they can’t topple the Islamic Republic, they can decapitate it,” Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times.

Iran has vowed revenge for the assassination but it remains unclear how it will proceed. A major attack runs the risk of triggering a full-scale war between Iran and Israel which would be catastrophic for the Middle East.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...76c39859&ei=14

[mapuc]

Revenge comes in many shapes

It would not be in the shape of massive attacks from Iran I think more a massive attacks from Hezbollah and Houthis.

Then we have my prediction which for the most are wrong.

Markus

[Dargo]

Residents of the Upper Galilee in northern Israel are asked to stay near protected areas (shelters) tonight following an updated situational assessment by the IDF, according to Israel's Channel 13