- Iran has fired air defence batteries to shoot down three drones over Isfahan, according to state media, as regional tensions rise following Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel after an attack against its diplomatic premises in Syria.
- Anonymous United States officials have told US media that Israel launched an attack against a site in Iran, but the Israeli army has yet to comment. Italian foreign minister says Israel gave US last-minute warning about attack on Iran.
- Flights in several Iranian cities were briefly suspended. There were also reports of explosions in Syria and Iraq.
- The escalation comes more than six months into Israel’s devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 34,000 people, and heightens fears of a spiral of violence across the region.
- Iran’s former top diplomat says attack on Iran a ‘diversion’ from GazaMohammad Javad Zarif has condemned the “reckless fireworks” carried out in Iran’s city of Isfahan, urging world leaders to instead focus on “ending Israeli transgressions” in its ongoing war on Gaza.In a statement posted on X, the former Iranian foreign minister said nothing should divert international public opinion from “Israel’s atrocities”.“Genocide continues apace in Gaza,” said the chief Iranian negotiator of the ill-fated 2015 nuclear deal with the US and world powers.He also criticised the US veto on the UN Security Council resolution on Palestine’s UN membership, saying it was “clearly a step in the wrong direction”.Zarif also said that the council’s failure to condemn the April 1 strike on the Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria compelled Iran to invoke its right to self-defence, referring to the April 13 attack on Israel.
- No signs of appetite to further escalate situationReporting from Tehran, IranAn investigation is under way to determine where the drones were launched from and who was behind the attack, but according to Iranian officials nothing has been damaged.The IAEA has also said there is no damage sustained to any of the country’s six nuclear facilities.Things are still very tense and whether or not this is the final response by Israel is unclear.But what is clear is that this attack has been successfully repelled by Iran and its forces for the time being. Whether or not anything else will happen in the coming hours or days remains to be seen, but for now there doesn’t seem to be any appetite here to further escalate the situation between Iran and Israel.
- Are Israel and Iran seeking a way out of escalatory cycle?Some analysts say the limited nature of the suspected Israeli attack in Iran and the restrained reactions among Iranian officials suggest that both parties are looking to de-escalate the tensions in the region.
- “We seem to be at a moment when both sides are seeking to exit the current escalatory cycle, with Israel conducting a very limited attack to demonstrate some response to the Iranian strikes and Tehran quickly playing down the incident in order not to be compelled to respond,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “For the moment, neither side want a direct war,” he told AFP.
- “What should be emphasised is a quasi-symmetry between the two strikes. There is a certain restraint on both sides,” said Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva. “Objective indications show us that for the Iranians this is a closed matter, and that for the Iranians, more than the Israelis, there is no interest in this tension continuing.”
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/4/19/live-israel-launches-missile-attack-in-response-to-iran-assault
