Israel-Hamas War Day 196: Israel strikes Iranian air base

Israel targeted the defense system of the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran during its strikes Friday morning, ABC quoted a senior American official as saying.

The Israelis were targeting an air defense radar site near Isfahan that’s part of the protection of the Natanz nuclear facility," ABC said, in the name of the official. 

"The first assessment is that the strike took out the site, but assessment hasn’t been completed, the official said."

The official noted, however, that the strike was meant to send a signal to Iran about Israeli capabilities, but not to escalate the situation. 

A general view of the Bushehr main nuclear reactor, Iran (credit: REUTERS/RAHEB HOMAVANDI)

Iran has downplayed the attack's significance

The attack, which Israel has not claimed credit for, was launched in response to the aerial barrage of ballistic missiles and attack drones that Iran sent to Israel last Saturday night following an airstrike in Damascus, widely attributed to Israel, that killed a senior officer in Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The officer was connected to Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy that has been attacking Israel almost daily since Hamas's attack on October 7.

In the hours since the strikes in Iran Friday morning, Iran has downplayed their effect and significance, declining to directly point the finger at Israel and announcing that no damage was done to any nuclear sites. The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) also reported that no damage was done to nuclear sites, and there were no reported casualties. 

The United States on Thursday effectively stopped the United Nations from recognizing a Palestinian state by casting a veto in the Security Council to deny the Palestinian Authority full membership of the world body.

The United States says an independent Palestinian state should be established through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and not through UN action.

It vetoed a draft resolution that recommended to the 193-member UN General Assembly that "the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations." Britain and Switzerland abstained, while the remaining 12 council members voted yes.

The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the UN General Assembly in 2012. But an application to become a full UN member needs to be approved by the Security Council and then at least two-thirds of the General Assembly.

The Palestinian push for full UN membership comes six months into a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a UN Security Council meeting about his invoking Article 99 of the UN charter to address the humanitarian crisis in the midst of conflict between Israel and Hamas at the UN headquarters in New York City, U.S., December 8, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/SHANNON STAPLETON)

"Recent escalations make it even more important to support good-faith efforts to find lasting peace between Israel and a fully independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian state," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council earlier on Thursday.

"Failure to make progress towards a two-State solution will only increase volatility and risk for hundreds of millions of people across the region, who will continue to live under the constant threat of violence," he said.

Both the US and Israel agreed on the shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah, the White House said following the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group meeting on Thursday between US and Israeli senior defense and intelligence officials. 

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan led the US side with the Israeli side led by Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi.

A statement from the White House said the discussion began in a small group format to discuss the Iran attack and the "collective efforts to further enhance Israel’s defense through advanced capabilities as well as cooperation with a broad coalition of military partners.

Thirteen Democrats and one Republican in the House of Representatives voted against a resolution on Thursday that condemns Iran's attack on Israel and fully supports Israel's right to respond to this aggression through military, diplomatic, economic, and other necessary means. 

Republicans voted 211-1, and Democrats voted 193-13. 

The most progressive members and loudest critics of US policy and support of Israel voted in opposition of the resolution, including Rep. Jaamal Bowman (D-NY); Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO); Rep. Grep Cesar (D-TX); Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL); Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA); Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA); Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA); Rep. Sheryl Lee (D-PA); Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY); Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN); Rep. Ayana Pressley (D-MA); Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). 

Loud critics of Israel voted in opposition

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is the one Republican who voted in opposition. 

According to the resolution, the House of Representatives condemns Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel; reaffirms and supports Israel’s right to self-defense; stands with Israel as it defends itself against Iran’s attack; seeks to re-establish deterrence against Iran and its proxies; and fully supports Israel’s right to respond to this aggression through military, diplomatic, economic, and other necessary means.

The Pentagon is poised to move munitions quickly to both Israel and Ukraine if the supplemental bill passes, Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a news briefing on Thursday. 

Addressing Rafah, Ryder said, "Our position has not changed in terms of the importance of ensuring that humanitarian assistance and civilian safety are taken into account as Israel conducts its operations against Hamas." 

At the time of the briefing, the White House had yet to release its readout of the meeting between senior US military and intelligence officials and Israeli officials, and Ryder would not comment on Israel heeding US recommendations. 

Pentagon support for Israel has not changed

Pentagon officials participating in the discussion included Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Melissa Dalton, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy Dan Shapiro, and Major General Joseph McGee, the Joint Staff Vice Director for Strategy Plans and Policy. 

Iran could review its "nuclear doctrine" following Israeli threats, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Thursday, raising concerns about Tehran's nuclear program, which it has always said was strictly for peaceful purposes.

Israel has said it will retaliate against Iran's April 13 missile and drone attack, which Tehran says was carried out in response to a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Damascus earlier this month.

"The threats of the Zionist regime (Israel) against Iran's nuclear facilities make it possible to review our nuclear doctrine and deviate from our previous considerations," Ahmad Haghtalab, the Guards commander in charge of nuclear security, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the last say on Tehran's nuclear program, which the West suspects has military purposes.

In 2021, Iran's then-intelligence minister said Western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons, the development of which Khamenei banned in a fatwa, or religious decree, in the early 2000s.

"Building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is wrong, and using it is haram (religiously forbidden) ... Although we have nuclear technology, Iran has firmly avoided it," Khamenei reiterated in 2019.

The International Criminal Court may be considering issuing international arrest warrants in the relatively near future against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials for alleged war crimes, N12 reported Thursday night.

Around 125 countries are members of the ICC, including essentially all of Europe, and are bound by treaty law to honor the ICC’s arrest warrants, though there have been examples of countries protesting such warrants and refusing to honor them.

The report was extremely puzzling given that the ICC has not decided all of the relevant jurisdictional questions it is supposed to decide before reaching an arrest warrants stage.

For example, the ICC is first supposed to address the issue of complementarity, which is the legal question of whether Israel properly probes itself sufficiently such that the ICC would not have the right to address any war crimes complaints based on complementary or additional jurisdiction.

There has been significant debate about this issue given that the IDF has a robust preliminary probes and criminal probes mechanism for investigating war crimes.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a vote on the state budget at the assembly hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, March 13, 2024. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

It carried out 32 criminal probes and around 500 preliminary probes regarding the 2014 Gaza conflict and is expected to carry out thousands of probes regarding the much longer and larger current war.

The ICC might still decide that the probes do not lead to enough convictions or jail time, but this was always expected to be a process where Israel and its allies would weigh in over a period of months or longer, as occurred regarding the question of whether the ICC could recognize Palestine as a state to enable it to have basic jurisdiction from an ICC member state from 2019-2021.

Netanyahu met with officials to address the issue

The Thursday report said Netanyahu met urgently with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Foreign Minister Israel Katz to address the issue and to appeal to Western allies to assist.

In addition, the report said Netanyahu discussed the issue with top British and German officials who were visiting Israel this week.

One way the ICC might avoid the procedural jurisdictional question of complementarity would be if it initially goes after Israel merely on a theory of war crimes relating to humanitarian aid issues.

This would seem to be a longshot given that other than the first few days of the war when Israel was still enduring an invasion, the IDF has facilitated some amount of humanitarian aid.

As the IDF’s position strengthened security-wise, that aid has grown.

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan did accuse Israel in fall 2023 of slow-rolling humanitarian aid, arguing this could be a war crime.

It was unclear at the time how he would make such a case given that Israel was permitting aid, and was arguing that security conditions were slowing the aid process.

That said, the ICC could argue that Israel’s recent increase from 100-200 trucks of aid per day to over 500 trucks of aid per day shows that if the political will had been present in earlier months, more aid could have streamed through despite security challenges.

Still, any case would need to prove that people are actually dying of starvation and not merely eating less or in danger of future food security issues.

An alternative scenario could be that the ICC prosecutor will argue that a letter sent to Israel in 2021 to provide all evidentiary updates and other potential letters since could be used against Israel as saying that it has not provided a defense or its counter-evidence that it is probing, given that to date the IDF has said it is still months or more away from issuing probe results for even some cases.

Yet, another scenario could be that the ICC prosecutor has carried out a secret evidentiary process before the ICC Pre Trial Chamber to get permission to issue the arrest warrants.

It is also possible that the report is completely wrong or mischaracterizes certain more minor ICC developments or mischaracterizes the time frame for such developments.

Neither the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the IDF legal division, nor the ICC prosecutor’s office had responded by press time.

Two anti-tank missiles hit a building in the area of Kibbutz Yiron Thursday evening, N12 reported. There were no casualties, but damage was caused to the building.

There was no alert for the missiles. 

This is a developing story.

The IDF has decided how it will counter-strike Iran and its proxies but has not yet settled on the timing; multiple sources told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Because the timing is still variable and because of all the necessary complex preparations, the current decision could change.

However, the very development of a decision shows the severity and determination of Israel’s leadership to strike back, though all indications are that Jerusalem still seeks to tamp down the attack to avoid spiraling into a regional war.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi hinted that the timing of the attack was not very imminent during a visit to the Arrow air defense battery of Battalion 136.

He said, “We are enabling a home front policy to at least give citizens this Passover week to live almost like normal because we completely trust you and your readiness.”

According to a survey performed by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 74% of the Israeli public opposes an Israeli counter-attack in Iran if it would undermine the security alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and several moderate Arab countries, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  

The survey was conducted by a team of researchers led by Nimrod Nir. Respondents were asked if they think Israel should respond to the Iranian attack on Saturday night, to which 52% answered that it is better not to respond to end the current round of conflict. In comparison, 48% answered that Israel should respond, even if it means that the price would be an extension of the current conflict. 

Respondents were also asked how they believed Israel should respond to Iran’s attack on Saturday night. Of the 48% who support a military response, 25% support an operation on Iranian territory, while over a third support a strategic operation to remove Iran’s nuclear threat. 

When asked if the Israeli government is strong compared to Iran, 46% of the Israeli respondents said that the Israeli government is strong. An equal number of respondents, 27%, said that the Israeli government is weak or responded that the government is neither weak nor strong.