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Iran said it launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles towards Israel on Saturday in a major attack following days of acute tension building up in the region and warnings from the US and elsewhere about a wider conflict erupting.
Air attack warning sirens began wailing over Jerusalem just before 2am local time on Sunday after the weapons were fired a few hours earlier from Iran with US and Jordanian military assisting Israel’s air defenses in intercepting the first incoming barrage.
With weapons believed to be still in the air en route to Israel, Iran’s mission to the United Nations posted on X: “Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded.”
However, it threatened more severe action in the face of further Israeli aggression and warned the US and Jordan specifically not to assist Israel.
Edit: here are links to the NYT and BBC live feeds.
Edit 2: updated summary and archive to reflect article changes.
Let me put things another way: you originally made quite a tall claim that the US “if it wants could delete the Houthi leadership” and confronted with my point that in similar conditions not long ago the US failed to “delete” a leadership even though it wanted to, your whole argument is now “it’s not quite the same conditions”.
Of course it’s not the same: it’s a bloody different country.
The thing is, merely me pointing out a situation were the US failed to “delete” a leadership when it wanted to is enough to prove my point (and if you want another example, how about Vietnam) because I was never making the point that the US will fail if it tries, I was making the point that US is not guaranteed to succeed, i.e. I was disproving your original claim and all that it takes to disprove a certaintly of success is to point out 1 situation where the it was a failure.
The entirety of your argument now is about “it might succeed” because Yemen ain’t Afghanistan.
Well, yeah, sure, I agree that it might, but that’s not what you wrote originally: what you wrote originally is that “if it wants it can”, which is a whole different claim from “it can try and maybe it will succeed”.
Whilst Yemen not being Afghanistan means US is not guaranteed to fail to “delete the Houthi leadership” if it tries (and I never claimed it will), Yemen being similar to Afghanistan makes it more likely (IMHO) that the US will fail than if, for example Yemen was like Iraq instead.
All that however is mere decoration to my original disproving of your original post which was done since I pointed out how it once in the recent past wanted to and failed.
I made 2 points:
The US could make a targeted strike to decapitate houthi leadership and and command infra. I made this claim knowing a bit about Yemen, but specifically knowing that Yemen is very different from Afghanistan and that the leadership and critical military infrastructure is very different to afghan / Taliban setups.
This action would result in a “quagmire” the likes of our past attempts to assert control over a middle eastern country via military power.
I am and have been clear that America shouldn’t do this, wouldn’t be successful in the long run, and wouldn’t create any of the change they would hope to achieve.
Edit but if they foolishly chose to, they absolutely could strike Yemen and massively destabilize / decapitate / destroy much of what makes the houtis a regional concern.
It doesn’t make sense that the Houthi “critical military infrastructure” is made of up of big fat targets that can just be bombed by a nation with air superiority for the simple reason that the Houthis have been bombed by Saudi Arabia (which has air superiority over Yemen), using US provided hardware and likely intel, for over a decade and they’re still there and still control most of the country.
This isn’t Iraq with AA and radar emplacements, big fat army barracks, large ammo depots or even government buildings that you can just take out to significantly degrade their combat effectivness and remove command and control structures.
Maybe there once were big fat critical infrastructures Houthi targets that the US could just take out there, but over a decade of war with an enemy with exactly the strategy of hitting them from the air has made sure it’s not the case anymore.
That the US and UK bombings to stop the Houthis from attacking ships seem to have failed miserably, is something that indicates that the Houthis are adapted to exactly the kind of attack favored by the US to takeout “critical military infrastructure” and leadership.
Another point is that judging not just by the Poshtun in Afghanistan but other similar tribal groups, taking out their leadership just results in new ones getting the job - tribal groups in the Middle East don’t just get totally lost and collapse as an effective military force if you take the top people out.
My reading of the actions of the US there now after the bombings failed to yield significant results is that they’re now playing the “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” game and instead of trying to take out the leaders (who are known variables) which would just see them replaced by unknown variables, they’re trying negotiating with them instead.