Link to the article – https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europe-joins-us-urging-restraint-by-israel-after-iranian-attack-2024-04-15/
Summary – Many allies of Israel are urging Israel to show restraint and avoid escalating the conflict in the Middle East even further. With these urges and requests for restraint, the Israeli military chief pledged to Iran’s missile and drone attack. He gave no details on how they would respond, and was very vague with his words but made it very clear there would be a response taking place. He said that with the amount of missiles and drones sent into Israel, there needs to be a response especially with the damage that has been done to Israeli land. The Iran attack was sent in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, and has increased concerns of the spread of the war. Also Joe Biden said the U.S. will not take any part in an Israeli counter-offensive against Iran because of the fear of escalation.
Analysis – Iran joining in on this conflict has the potential to be the first of many new countries, in what may be seen as a full regional war or even world war three. Israel has shown recently that they do not exactly take disrespect and often retaliate with bigger acts than what was initially done to them, so if Israel does launch a big attack on Iran in response to this we may see a huge escalation of the conflict with massive worldwide implications. Countries will be forced to choose a side and many countries in the surrounding area will face difficult military decisions. The fact that Iran is allies with Russia, and Israel is allies with America, makes this some sort of a proxy war and shows that the U.S. and Russia are still fighting and the escalation of this conflict could simply be an American and Russian war. Biden pledging not to take part in a counter-offensive act is a good thing because it shows that we are not aiming to escalate the conflict or turn it into a huge war.
Connection to class – This connects to the idea of war crimes because it is unfortunately pretty likely that the Israeli response to this attack will be a war crime and violate Iranians of their human rights. Israel has committed countless war crimes already against Palestine and I don’t see what is stopping them now from committing heinous acts against Iran for attempting to launch missiles and drones into their territory.