In this Israeli city hit by an Iranian missile, many people still support their military's operation
PETAH TIKVA, Israel (AP) — When an Iranian missile slammed into this central Israeli city, Miryam was huddled inside the concrete safe room in her family's apartment.
Miryam was unscathed by the blast. But four people in the building next door were killed, and the explosion blew off the doors to the apartment and destroyed the kitchen and bathroom.
'This was the scariest thing I'd ever experienced,' said Miryam, who spoke to AP on condition that her last name not be used because she serves in the military. 'But the right thing is to attack Iran; I don't want them to have this power over us.'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long identified Iran as Israel's greatest enemy, citing its hostile rhetoric and support for militant groups and accusing it of pursuing nuclear weapons — a charge Iran denies. After years of threats, Israel launched a surprise attack on Friday, killing Iranian military leaders and striking nuclear facilities in a blistering aerial assault.
While no opinion polls have been released yet, the Israeli public — and even Netanyahu's rivals in the opposition – appears to be lining up behind the military operation in these early days.
Such sentiment was evident in Petah Tikva, a middle-class city outside Tel Aviv where nearly a dozen residents said they support the operation, even after the deadly blast.
The Iranian missiles appear to be the strongest assault on Israel's heartland since then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's Scud missile attacks during the first Gulf War in 1991.
Residents in the area had packed suitcases, with some headed to stay with relatives and others to hotels paid for by the city. Idle teenagers sat among the wreckage staring at their ruined apartments.
'I still don't understand it,' said Eitan Tevel, 14, who spent an hour in the safe room of his sixth-floor apartment before emerging to see it damaged. Still, he said, he wants Israel to keep striking Iran.
'If we don't do it, many people will be destroyed,' he said.
Israel has inflicted heavy damage on Iran. Officials say at least 224 people have been killed in Israel's air offensive and hundreds others wounded. On Monday, Israel ordered a neighborhood home to over 300,000 people in Tehran, the Iranian capital, to evacuate ahead of an expected bombing campaign.
That has not halted the Iranian missile fire. So far, 24 people have been killed in Israel and more than 500 injured, Israeli officials said, after Iran launched more than 370 missiles and hundreds of drones.
By mid-day, first responders in Petah Tikva were still assessing the damage and clearing buildings. Four complexes housing hundreds of families were impacted by the missile, which struck the side of one of the buildings and tore off the exterior.
Windows and doors were blown off, with few cars in the vicinity unscathed. Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, visited the neighborhood, calling the attack 'pure evil.'
Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, said that as bad as the missile attacks have been, people had expected even worse.
'For many years we were told that when the day comes, we might have to spend days and weeks in bomb shelters and see thousands of buildings crash. That's not the case,' he said.
But he warned that if there is a sense that Israel is failing to achieve its objectives, support could quickly dwindle.
Older residents in this hard-hit neighborhood said the strikes reminded them of the first Gulf War over 30 years ago.
Israel had limited air defenses, and people feared a chemical attack by the Iraqi leader. Many remember carrying gas masks and sealing windows with tape and plastic.
People now feel protected by Israel's robust air defenses, but they also believe there's more at stake in this conflict.
'This is more scary,' said Nadav Shomron, 44, who remembers that war as a boy. 'If we have a nuclear Iran, Israel can't exist.'
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Chicago Tribune
32 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Mohammad Hosseini: Civilians like my family are caught in the crossfire between Iran and Israel
Ordinary people are in total shock and stress in Iran. The capital city Tehran, a megacity with more than 10 million inhabitants — and 17 million in the metropolitan area — has thousands of hospitals and other civilian facilities that can't be evacuated immediately. Many people, including my parents, have responsibilities that prevent them from leaving Tehran. Then there are many who have no other place to go. Those who have left Tehran are stuck on roads for hours on their way to nearby cities that are being inundated with the influx, and they face a shortage of food, fuel and other essential resources. In short, we are dealing with a nightmare in which even the official media that communicates emergency warnings and supports civilians has been a target. I was born in Iran at a time when the armed forces were fighting an Iraqi invasion, a war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. My only recollection of that horrible event is the sound of sirens. At school, our books told us that America and Israel are enemies: 'The Americans exploited us until 1979, and now that we are finally free of their tyranny and have finally pushed the Iraqis out, we should contain the American military offshoot, Israel, to fully push colonial interests out of our region.' This and other messaging that was much more radical — involving weekly chants of 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel' during Friday prayers — were promoted by the state media. Nevertheless, the ordinary people of Iran have not acted on these sentiments and, based on anecdotes from visitors to Iran, are very welcoming toward Americans. Perhaps the biggest fear in Iran and Israel has been the prospect of a direct confrontation. On both sides, people have tried to moderate harsh rhetoric or encourage their political establishment to find peaceful solutions such as the 2015 nuclear deal. Nevertheless, hard-liners in both countries have remained resolute, telling the public that moderates are naive and fail to grasp the true nature of the threat. Iranian hard-liners have consistently pointed to the presence of American military bases in the region as a major source of danger. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have argued that, given Iran's support for regional proxies, it is better to strike first than to risk destruction, as captured by the doctrine 'rise and kill first.' This time, though, we are all afraid that the current conflict will go on for weeks before one of the parties backs off. Many Iranians and Israelis who have left their country have family and friends back home who are caught in the crossfire. My retired parents are both taking care of their moms. My maternal grandmother has Parkinson's disease and cannot do much. My paternal grandmother has severe arthritis with significant cartilage damage and bone issues in her back, which have made her completely immobile. Health care services are overwhelmed or short-staffed, and chaos is rising in both countries. In Israel, empty supermarket shelves and uneven distribution of bomb shelters are causing stress to rise among its residents. In Iran, the internet has been shut down nationwide, and international landline calls have been blocked since Wednesday, cutting off citizens from contact with loved ones. Having heard explosions in recent days, my mom told me in one of our last calls that she is reminded of when the nearby Imam Khomeini Hospital was hit by a missile in 1987. She had left her children at home to buy groceries and was on her way back when the attack happened. 'When I heard the blast, I dropped everything and ran,' she recalled. By the time she reached home, the windows were shattered, and her ears were still ringing, a problem she continues to suffer from. She walked into the house and found my sister and me with wet pants, crying. There are many stories like this one, and many far worse, but more importantly, new ones are unfolding as ordinary people in both countries are terrorized by the conflict. Indeed, the outcome of this conflict, whether a fragile ceasefire or a regime change in Iran, is likely to be disastrous for the Iranian and Israeli people. In the case of a ceasefire, it would leave behind weakened governments that, despite decades of propaganda, failed to protect their citizens. On the other hand, regime change could plunge Iran into chaos, triggering a protracted, uncertain process of drafting a new constitution, forming a stable government and rebuilding public trust, a process that may ultimately fail. Consider the ongoing instability in Libya. In Israel, hard-liners would tighten their grip on all facets of the political establishment, push Arabs back and destroy any chance of building a democratic society. A ceasefire would at least prevent further bloodshed in both countries and give grassroots communities a chance to regroup and heal the trauma of the war. Further escalation, on the other hand, would cause only more death and destruction and limit opportunities for reconciliation.
Chicago Tribune
32 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: U.S. bombs fall in Iran
Saturday evening, President Donald Trump announced on social media that the U.S. had dropped 'a full payload of bombs' on Iran's most important nuclear site, Fordow, as well as completing strikes on Natanz and Isfahan. The stunning action, which came sooner than even close observers anticipated and is without obvious precedent, embroiled the U.S., for better or worse, in the middle of the ongoing war between Israel and Iran. Saturday June 22 turned out to be a historic day with likely far-reaching consequences for the Middle East. Consider: An American attack unfolded inside Iran. Many Americans were unnerved by the President's action and understandably so, given the likelihood of an Iranian response, as we write yet unknown. What should be made of Trump's action? We would have preferred the President had given more time to diplomacy, always preferable to war. His 'two-week' deadline appears to have been a ruse and we prefer that the President of the United States keep his word. And we would have preferred the involvement of Congress. Our qualms do not mean we believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's oppressive and theocratic Iranian regime, which has fought proxy wars by propping up the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, should be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Nobody wants that to happen, beginning with Israel, of course, but including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and, well, every nation where rational people dominate public discourse. How close the Iran regime really is to building a nuclear weapon is contested. Those of us with long memories can remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb as far back as 1996. More than 20 years ago, Netanyahu was again saying that Iran was very close to building a bomb that could reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. All this time, Iran has kept insisting its nuclear program is only for peaceful, civilian purposes. On the other hand, nuclear watchdogs also have consistently raised concerns about the growth of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and Khamenei's regime has not exactly been a model of cooperation. Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said, 'is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent.' That does not constitute evidence of a plan to build a bomb in and of itself, but the higher the level of enrichment, the closer the uranium gets to 90% weapons grade, and Iran's enrichment level is widely viewed by experts as a significant step closer to weapons grade. For the average American, the truth is not easy to discern even from our own officials. Take U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's testimony to Congress this past March. On the one hand, she said the view of the intelligence community was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.' On the other, she also said Iran was suddenly talking a lot more about nuclear weapons. That might sound vague, but it's actually highly significant, given the regime's hatred of Israel and the battles with the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. It's likely that the intra-Iranian discourse has shifted in the light of Israeli aggression. As one of the attendees at the American Nuclear Society's conference in Chicago this past week told us, there likely are those within the Iranian program who are more than interested in building a nuclear bomb to protect the regime, even if the majority are scientists interested only in peaceful, civilian uses and either ambivalent or silently hostile toward Khamenei. The question that does not get enough attention is the balance of power. Some in the latter category, she told us, already have been killed by Israel, much to their colleagues' regret. Some of those in the former category who are still alive thus are most likely newly emboldened. At the time of writing, it was unclear how much Saturday night changed that equation. No doubt there are Iranian voices speaking in favor of a major response. One can only hope other voices are arguing for caution, not least for the people of Iraq who awoke in fear Sunday morning. In terms of realpolitik, of course, Israel most wants regime change in Iran. So does the vast majority of the Iranian diaspora, including some we know in Chicago. So does the vast majority of the Iranian people, given Khamenei's repression of women, his stealing of elections, his meeting of dissent with brutal violence, his funding of terror, his denouncement of opposing voices. And that's only the start of the list. This is not a regime worth defending, and recent progressive attempts to link the situation in Iran with the war in Iraq, ostensibly fought over weapons of mass destruction that did not prove to exist at scale, are illogical. This time around, the question in Iran is more about intent, not the existence or otherwise of weapons. And people's intent can change as circumstances change. What is worth debating is whether the Israeli attacks will make the end of the Khamenei regime more likely. You could argue the events of the last several days are weakening Khamenei. You could also argue that spring does not arrive when the sky is full of bombs and people are fleeing Tehran as fast as humanly possible. So where should you stand? Not with the MAGA isolationists, certainly, who claim that none of this has anything to do with this country, a view widely assumed to be cleaving the MAGA movement in two, which is no bad thing in our view. That's not to say the likes of Tucker Carlson are wrong about the potential costs of a war with Iraq; all wars extract their price and too little stateside attention is being paid in our view to the danger of nuclear contamination, which is rightly front of mind in the Persian Gulf States, even though those states are no fans of the Iranian regime and want it gone. But the horse bolted decades ago when it comes to U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But we also don't recommending standing with those far leftists who view Iran as benign, its hatred of Israel as overblown and who overlook Khamenei's human rights abuses to fit some anti-capitalist narrative. When you see the extremes of American political discourse getting into bed together, that's a great moment to leave the bedroom. What has changed the most, of course, is that the Oct. 7 attacks changed the Israeli mindset vis-a-vis Iran, and that Netanyahu calculated that the Trump administration would be more supportive of the kind of systemic change in the region that Israel now sees as crucial to its security. He was not wrong. Trump, we all know by now, is a born improviser, which can be dangerous in situations like these. Some would argue his application of force was necessary if we want to get Iran to halt its nuclear activities. The other view is that actually dropping some massive bomb deep down into the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo will not be worth the cost. Adding to the complexity, arguably the redundancy, of that question is the reality that Israel was not going to stop, whatever the U.S. did or did not do in its support. One hopeful interpretation is that the U.S. action ends with this move against the nuclear facilities and that the talking now starts again. This weekend, though, there is reason to worry about the Iranian people, most of whom long for a deal wherein Khamenei and his crew hop a plane and set the Iranian people free. In his social media post, Trump said this was the time for peace. May he be good for his word.
Chicago Tribune
32 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Steven Katz: Israel's war against Iran is just
Israel is waging an existential fight for its survival as a Jewish state. And it is winning and fighting well. Now, it's apparent to most reasonable observers that Israel and Iran have been in a state of heightened hostilities since the Iranian-enabled Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. In fact, prior to Israel's escalation early June 13, Iranian-armed, -funded and -directed proxy groups such as Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon have indiscriminately launched thousands of rockets at Israel's population centers — killing and injuring scores of civilian men, women and children. In addition, the Iranian regime directly launched hundreds of ballistic missiles toward Israel in April and October. Even the Iranian leaders have acknowledged that they are at war with Israel and seek its destruction. One must apply the appropriate just war standard 'jus in bello' to determine whether Israel's attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and scientists, ballistic missile sites and military leadership is just. Since June 13, many experts have been debating whether the Israeli strikes were 'preemptive,' which is a normative exception allowing for military action prior to an imminent threat from materializing. In 1967, Israel had intelligence that Egypt was preparing to attack Israel, and Israel preemptively destroyed 90% of Egypt's air force prior to the Six-Day War. Conversely, 'preventative' military action is forbidden as it allows for states to attack other states over remote concerns or potential future threats that could be years or decades away. However, what both standards have in common is that they are used when two countries are not in a state of hostilities. For this reason, these standards are inappropriate to gauge the justness of Israel's actions against Iran. What the world witnessed on June 13 was a continuation of ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran and its proxies. Whether Iran could assemble a nuclear bomb in weeks or months informed the urgency of the Israeli military strikes but has no bearing on whether the current flare-up is just or unjust. Therefore, the right questions we should ask to determine whether Israel's Operation Rising Lion is just is whether the Israeli military is striking targets that are necessary to achieve its military objectives — to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program; whether the strikes are proportional; whether Israel is targeting people and infrastructure that are not lawful, such as schools, homes and mosques that are not being used for a military purpose; and lastly whether Israel is taking measures to mitigate unintended harm to civilians. All credible reporting demonstrates that Israel is going after only military targets that directly support the Iranian nuclear program and enable the regime's ability to attack Israel. To date, Israel has eliminated six top Iranian generals and nine nuclear scientists, targeted and destroyed a third of Iran's missile launchers, and attacked and degraded critical uranium enrichment facilities such as the ones at Natanz and Isfahan. According to Iranian authorities, at least 224 Iranians have been killed, but like the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, this figure and its breakdown of civilians and combatants should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. Like Hamas, we should expect this figure to be both inflated and obfuscate combatant and civilian deaths. However, even if we accepted that most of the 224 Iranians killed were civilians, then it is still a comparatively low number given the hundreds of targets the Israeli military has engaged since June 13. For context, the U.S. military authorized up to 10 civilians killed per strike against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. In addition to the Israeli military demonstrating distinction between military targets and civilians, the military is also taking active measures to protect Iranian civilians from strikes — saying on June 16 on X, 'In the coming hours, the IDF will operate in the area, as it has done in recent days around Tehran, to attack military structures belonging to the Iranian regime.' The account went on to say that 'citizens of Iran, for your safety and security, please evacuate the area.' Now, let's turn to the Iranian regime's grotesque conduct since June 13. Iran has indiscriminately launched approximately 400 ballistic missiles at Israel, zeroing in on population centers in Tel Aviv and Haifa. So far, all the Israelis killed have been civilians, and numerous residential apartment buildings have collapsed or have been declared uninhabitable. It should be no surprise that Iran's conduct and despicable tactics are no different from the terror groups it supports such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. To give Iran some credit, the Iranian military did tell Israelis to vacate the entire country, but this was obviously a threat and not to spare lives during future salvos: 'Warnings for you in the coming days: Leave the occupied territories, because, certainly, they won't be inhabitable in the future!' The Iranian regime would use any means to vacate the Jews from the land of Israel. They have made this point clear in the means and methods of their ballistic missile response. Iran is the aggressor and continues to contravene the laws of war. There is no doubt they would use nuclear weapons against the people of Israel if they had them. For this reason, Israel must stay the course to achieve a lasting, secure and just peace.
