Israel began carrying out massive strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut last night, just hours after its armed forces ordered the entire population of the area - more than 500,000 people - to evacuate immediately, the Guardian newspaper reported, BTA reported.
The strikes represent a significant escalation of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which began after Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel on Monday in the latest escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, it said The publication.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, meanwhile, said last night that the decision to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was made in November, long before the collapse of negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, which US President Donald Trump says triggered the US attack on Iran, writes the “Guardian“. Katz's comments will add fuel to the fire of Trump's critics, who accuse him of allowing Israel to drag Washington into a major war in the Middle East, the newspaper notes.
The US and Israeli air campaign against Iran has eliminated the highest echelons of the Islamic Republic's political and military leadership, but there are currently no signs that this has weakened the Iranian regime's grip, writes the “Washington Post“, citing European, Arab and US officials familiar with the intelligence assessments services.
According to officials, Iran was prepared for this conflict, the publication points out. The command structures built to survive an attack on the leaders of the regime appear to remain largely intact, which allowed Tehran to launch retaliatory strikes against Israel, Qatar and Bahrain just hours after the first US attacks.
Despite the intensity of the strikes and the widespread nature of the destruction in Iran, there are currently no reports of significant dissension within the regime or uprisings by the Iranian people, the newspaper points out.
“They understand that they will not be able to defeat the most powerful army in the world and that they can try to inflict as much damage as possible through an asymmetric military response to force the United States to seek de-escalation“, said a European official quoted by the “Washington Post“. That is why Iran has prioritized retaliatory strikes against countries such as those from the Persian Gulf in order to force them to put pressure on the United States to seek a way out of the conflict, he adds.
The question of whether the American president, who promised to pursue an isolationist foreign policy during his election campaign, was right to enter into a conflict with an unknown destination in the Middle East has been among the most frequently discussed by American political analysts, commentators and journalists since the first strikes on Tehran were carried out on Saturday, the British newspaper “Telegraph“ writes.
Political strategists say that Trump risks the war in Iran distracting him from domestic politics and argue that he should instead focus on the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, the publication points out.
Many of his supporters interpret Trump's “America First“ policy as a promise to end wars abroad and at least some of them question the correctness of his decision to launch a military operation against Iran, commented „Telegraph“.
Meanwhile, the „New York Times“ in its investigation wrote that it was able to confirm that American forces were attacking targets near the Strait of Hormuz at the same time as the strike on an elementary school in the Iranian city of Minab and that the United States was most likely responsible for the attack.
American officials have indicated in public statements that on the day of the strike, American aircraft did indeed carry out missions in the area where the school is located, the publication states.
The newspaper quotes Wes Bryant, a military analyst and former senior adviser on civilian casualties at the Pentagon, who concluded that all the buildings in the Minab area, including the school, were hit with „perfect and precise“ strikes. According to Bryant the most likely explanation is that the school was a “mistargeted” and that US forces attacked the site without realizing that there might be a large number of civilians inside.
If the bomb that hit the school is confirmed to be American, the question is likely to arise whether the strike was carried out by mistake or based on outdated information, commented the “New York Times“. The publication quotes Yanina Dill, an expert in military law at the University of Oxford, according to whom the military is obliged to “check the status“ of its targets to ensure that civilians will not be harmed. Failure to fulfill this obligation may constitute a violation of international law, she concludes.