Israel’s defense minister warned Saturday that “Tehran will burn” if Iran continues firing missiles, as the two countries traded blows a day after Israel launched a blistering surprise attack on Iranian nuclear and military sites, killing several top generals.
Israel’s military said the strikes also killed nine senior scientists and experts involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s U.N. ambassador said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded.
Iran retaliated by launching waves of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, where explosions lit the night skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and shook buildings. The Israeli military urged civilians, already rattled by 20 months of war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, to head to shelter for hours. Health officials said three people were killed and dozens wounded.
To be fair, Iran is an authoritarian theocracy that has called for the total annihilation of Israel. That may agree with what many crazy people on Lemmy want too, but it cannot really be called defensive. It’s not as Iran just wants to “be left alone”. In the eyes of Israel Iran is an existential threat, therefore the attack did not come out of a vacuum.
Why does Iran want total annihilation of Israel?
Israel engages in similar rhetoric. I wonder if the sentiment would be “Iran just preemptively defended itself” amongst our politics and media if Iran was to strike nuclear facilities and assassinate military leaders and scientists in Israel.
if we look at history then israel is a existential threat for not just all its neighbour but the entire humanity.
you do realize that apart from bombing school full of kids and sniping pregnant women, israel also supplies spyware and weapon to far worse countries than iran and even some of the most violent drug cartels of the world ? and they do so with full support of cia because they have hijacked both parties using the “aid” we give them.