Iran says it gave warning before attacking Israel. US says that’s not true
Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles on Saturday in a retaliatory strike against Israel
Washington says did have contact with Iran through Swiss intermediaries but did not get notice 72 hours in advance
Updated 15 April 2024
Reuters
WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD/DUBAI: Turkish, Jordanian and Iraqi officials said on Sunday that Iran gave wide notice days before its drone and missile attack on Israel, but US officials said Tehran did not warn Washington and that it was aiming to cause significant damage.
Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles on Saturday in a retaliatory strike after a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Syria.
Most of the drones and missiles were downed before reaching Israeli territory, though a young girl was critically injured and there were widespread concerns of further escalation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that Iran gave neighboring countries and Israel’s ally the United States 72 hours’ notice it would launch the strikes.
Turkiye’s Foreign Ministry said it had spoken to both Washington and Tehran before the attack, adding it had conveyed messages as an intermediary to be sure reactions were proportionate.
“Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this. We were aware of the possibilities. The developments were not a surprise,” said a Turkish diplomatic source.
One senior official in US President Joe Biden’s administration denied Amirabdollahian’s statement, saying Washington did have contact with Iran through Swiss intermediaries but did not get notice 72 hours in advance.
“That is absolutely not true,” the official said. “They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of ... ‘these will be the targets, so evacuate them.’“
Tehran sent the United States a message only after the strikes began and the intent was to be “highly destructive” said the official, adding that Iran’s claim of a widespread warning may be an attempt to compensate for the lack of any major damage from the attack.
“We received a message from the Iranians as this was ongoing, through the Swiss. This was basically suggesting that they were finished after this, but it was still an ongoing attack. So that was (their) message to us,” the US official said.
Iraqi, Turkish and Jordanian officials each said Iran had provided early warning of the attack last week, including some details.
The attack with drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles risked causing major casualties and escalating the conflict.
US officials said on Friday and Saturday they expected an imminent attack and urged Iran against one, with Biden tersely saying his only message to Tehran was: “Don’t.”
ESCALATION
Two Iraqi sources, including a government security adviser and a security official, said Iran had used diplomatic channels to inform Baghdad about the attack at least three days before it happened.
The exact timing of the attack was not disclosed at that point, but was passed to Iraqi security and military authorities hours before the strikes, allowing Baghdad to close its airspace and avoid fatal accidents.
“The government clearly understood from the Iranian officials that the US military in Iraq was also aware of the attack in advance,” said the Iraqi security official.
A senior Jordanian official said Iran had summoned Arab envoys in Tehran on Wednesday to inform them of their intention to carry out an attack, though it did not specify the timing.
Asked if Iran had also given details about the targets and kind of weapons to be used, the Jordanian source did not respond directly but indicated that that was the case.
An Iranian source briefed on the matter said Iran had informed the US through diplomatic channels that included Qatar, Turkiye and Switzerland about the scheduled day of the attack, saying it would be conducted in a manner to avoid provoking a response.
How far escalation can be avoided remains in question. Biden has told Israel the United States will not join any Israeli retaliation, the US official said.
However, Israel is still weighing its response and will “exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us,” Israeli minister Benny Gantz said on Sunday.
Israel’s strike on Ain Al-Hilweh camp stirs up grim memories of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees
On Oct. 1, an airstrike at the home of an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander leveled four buildings and claimed five lives
Since the 1970s, the sprawling refugee camp has been the turf of militant Palestinian factions with a history of violent clashes
Updated 2 sec ago
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: Israel’s military campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon has not left the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain Al-Hilweh, unscathed, dredging up grim memories of previous attacks and convulsions of violence in the nation’s camps.
On Oct. 1, an airstrike, which leveled four buildings and killed at least five people, marked the first time Ain Al-Hilweh had been targeted since October last year when cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah began.
The strike was reportedly aimed at the home of Munir Al-Maqdah, a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — a coalition of armed groups associated with Fatah, one of the major Palestinian political parties. Early reports indicated that Al-Maqdah was not home at the time, and his condition and whereabouts remain unknown.
Located 3 km southeast of the coastal city of Sidon, Ain Al-Hilweh occupies approximately 170 acres, or 688,000 square meters. According to UN figures, it is the most densely populated camp in Lebanon, housing more than 55,000 people as of 2023.
The camp was established by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1948 to shelter refugees, most of whom escaped northern Palestine after the Nakba — the mass displacement of Palestinians following the Arab-Israeli war.
Since its establishment, Ain Al-Hilweh has frequently been a target of Israeli assaults and a battleground for regional rivalries, including between Palestinian factions.
“In a nutshell, Ain Al-Hilweh is the largest camp with an ongoing battle for its control,” Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanese economist and political adviser, told Arab News.
Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, said Ain Al-Hilweh “has long been a focal point for Palestinian resistance.”
She told Arab News: “The camp has evolved into a symbol of Palestinian resilience and resistance, not only against Israeli occupation but also in the broader struggle for Palestinian rights and self-determination.
“The significance of Ain Al-Hilweh lies in its role as a base for various Palestinian political factions and militant groups, including Fatah and others aligned with different political ideologies and resistance.”
In 1974, Israeli jets bombed seven Palestinian camps and villages in south Lebanon, including Ain Al-Hilweh, which suffered the heaviest bombardment. The bombing came in retaliation for an earlier attack by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on a school in Maalot, northern Israel.
Less than a decade later, in 1982, during the second invasion of Lebanon, Israel pounded the camp with airstrikes, leaving it almost fully destroyed. The attack took place following an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London.
Diab said the camp was “a target of Israeli military operations, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, due to its association with the Palestine Liberation Organization and other militant groups that carried out attacks against Israel.
“The camp has also been a staging ground for armed resistance, drawing attention from both Israeli and Lebanese authorities,” she said.
Israel had justified its invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s on the grounds that Palestinian fighters operating near Israel’s northern border needed to be eliminated. However, after conducting its operations in the border region, Israeli troops advanced all the way to Beirut.
In the aftermath of the invasion, Yasser Arafat, the then-leader of the PLO, was forced out of Beirut. Likewise, more than 2,000 Syrian troops pulled out of the capital, having been stationed there since 1976, when President Hafez Assad intervened to prevent the defeat of his Maronite Christian allies in the civil war.
“After the Israeli invasion and the evacuation of Yasser Arafat from Beirut, there was a gradual attempt by pro-Syrian Palestinian factions to take over and get rid of what was left of Fatah and the PLO,” said Shehadi.
“Syria was finishing the job started by Israel of eradicating the PLO and later, it seems that Hezbollah took over that job. The red line between Syria and Israel was at Zahrani just south of Sidon, below which no Syrian presence was tolerated.
“The War of the Camps was part of the (broader) battle for Syrian control (in Lebanon), leading to pro-Syrian factions gaining control north of Saida (Sidon), while Fatah and the PLO sought refuge in camps south of Saida, mainly in Rashidieh and Burj El-Shemali.”
The War of the Camps, which took place from 1985 to 1988 during the Lebanese civil war, was an extension of the political struggle between Syria and the PLO. Syria and its Lebanese ally, the Amal movement, sought to disarm Palestinian camps to prevent another Israeli invasion.
After Israeli forces began a phased withdrawal from Lebanon in February 1985, Amal took over West Beirut that April. Amal then besieged and later attacked the Palestinian camps in Beirut, including Sabra, Shatila, and Burj El-Barajneh.
Amal, supported by the government of President Assad, demanded that Palestinian camps relinquish their weapons and hand over security responsibilities to its ranks.
In 1986, the conflict in Beirut spilled over into Tyre and Sidon, where Amal also besieged the Palestinian refugee camps of Rashidieh, Mieh Mieh, and Ain Al-Hilweh and cut off aid, including food and medicines.
Seeking to pressure Amal to lift the siege on Rashidieh, Palestinian guerrillas attacked and captured the town of Maghdouche, an Amal stronghold close to Ain Al-Hilweh. The fighting intensified between Amal and Palestinian groups despite international calls for a ceasefire.
“Ain Al-Hilweh plays a crucial role in the complex relationship between Israel, Lebanon, and Palestinian factions, as well as in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Diab of the Institute for Migration Studies.
“The camp has also been implicated in regional rivalries, with different Palestinian and Islamist groups receiving backing from various state and non-state actors, further complicating its internal politics and drawing in regional powers.
“In this sense, Ain Al-Hilweh represents not only a physical space of resistance but also a microcosm of the larger Palestinian struggle for statehood, refugee rights, and regional geopolitical contestations.”
Notorious for its lawlessness, Ain Al-Hilweh was not only the site of conflicts with external parties but also a frequent hotspot for clashes between the various armed factions within the camp. “Over the years, it has been a point for internal conflicts between these factions,” said Diab.
In 1990, Fatah, then led by Arafat, gained control of the camp after three days of fighting with the Abu Nidal Organization, which had split from Fatah in 1974.
After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, which engulfed the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus, thousands of Palestinians fled to Lebanon, many of them cramming into Ain Al-Hilweh.
By March 2014, more than 52,000 Palestinians displaced from Syria had sought shelter in Lebanon, according to UN figures.
With even more armed groups now residing in the camp, violence returned in 2017, when Palestinian factions and a Daesh-affiliated militant group, Fatah Al-Islam, engaged in fierce clashes.
Violence between the camp’s Fatah fighters and extremists broke out again in July 2023 and continued until September of that year, claiming at least 30 lives, leaving hundreds injured, damaging infrastructure, and forcing thousands to flee.
Palestinian officials had said street battles started after an unknown gunman tried to kill an Islamist militia leader, known as Mahmoud Khalil, but instead killed one of his companions.
On July 30, 2023, a top Fatah commander in the Palestinian National Security Forces, Abu Ashraf Al-Armoushi, and three of his companions were reportedly slain by Islamist militants.
As the fighting in the camp intensified and stray bullets hit residential buildings in Sidon, commandos from the Lebanese Army were deployed near the camp’s entrance.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the clashes and called on “the Palestinian leadership to cooperate with the army to control the security situation and hand over those meddling with security to the Lebanese authorities.”
He also blamed outside forces for their “repeated attempts to use Lebanon” as a battleground for settling scores “at the expense of Lebanon and the Lebanese.”
The violence nevertheless resumed in September, with at least 10 people killed during five days of intense fighting.
Today, as Israel ramps up its assault across Lebanon, residents of the 12 official Palestinian camps in the country fear renewed violence — both from the outside and from within.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon already experience extreme poverty and face severe restrictions on their movement, employment opportunities, and rights to education and healthcare.
More attacks on the camps, which could trigger fresh bouts of internal turmoil, are likely to worsen their predicament.
Netanyahu told US Israel willing to strike Iranian military targets, Washington Post reports
Updated 15 October 2024
Reuters
WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the United States that Israel is willing to strike Iranian military targets and not nuclear or oil ones, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing two officials familiar with the matter.
Sending a THAAD air defense system to Israel adds to strain on US Army forces
“Everybody wants US Army air defense forces,” Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said Monday as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the US Army’s annual conference. “This is our most deployed formation”
Updated 15 October 2024
AP
WASHINGTON: The deployment of a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army’s air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday.
The service’s top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants.
“The air defense, artillery community is the most stressed. They have the highest ‘optempo’ really of any part of the Army,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, using a phrase meaning the pace of operations. “We’re just constantly trying to be as disciplined as we can, and give Secretary Austin the information he needs to accurately assess the strain on the force when he’s considering future operational deployments.”
Wormuth said the Army has to be careful about “what we take on. But of course, in a world this volatile, you know, sometimes we have to do what we have to do.”
The Pentagon announced the THAAD deployment Sunday, saying it was authorized at the direction of President Joe Biden. US officials said the system will be moved from a location in the continental United States to Israel and that it will take a number of days for it and the soldiers to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of troop movements.
The move adds to what have been growing tensions within the Defense Department about what weapons the US can afford to send to Ukraine, Israel or elsewhere and the resulting risks to America’s military readiness and its ability to protect the nation.
“Everybody wants US Army air defense forces,” Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said Monday as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the US Army’s annual conference. “This is our most deployed formation.”
The decision to send the THAAD came as Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel. Israel already has a multilayered air defense system, but a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base Sunday killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others, underscoring the potential need for greater protection.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. The Sunday drone attack was Hezbollah’s deadliest strike since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
Since the THAAD deployment only involves about 100 soldiers, it won’t add a tremendous amount of additional strain on air defense forces, Wormuth said at the conference.
But it adds to the pace of their deployments. Since the frenetic pace of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has subsided, the military has tried to ensure that service members have sufficient time at home to train and reset between deployments.
Shrinking that so-called dwell time can have an impact on the Army’s ability to keep good soldiers in the force.
“They’re very good, but obviously deploying for a year and coming back for a year and deploying for a year — it’s tough to do for anybody,” George said.
He said the Army is looking at a range of ways to limit the impact on recruiting and retention, including growing the force and modernizing the systems so that it takes fewer soldiers to operate them.
But the repeated deployments makes it difficult to get the systems into the depots where they can be upgraded.
As a result, Wormuth said, Army leaders are trying to make their arguments as clear as possible when combatant commanders go to Austin and ask for another Patriot system in the Middle East or another one for Ukraine.
“We need to be able to bring these units home to be able to go through that modernization process,” she said. “So we’re trying to lay that out for Secretary Austin so that he can weigh those risks — essentially current versus future risks — as he makes recommendations to the president about whether to send the Patriot here or there.”
The UN says over 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in 3 weeks by war
More than 2,300 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes, nearly 75 percent of them over the last month, according to the Health Ministry
Updated 15 October 2024
AP
BEIRUT: More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the UN children’s agency said Monday, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.
Israel has escalated its campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, including launching a ground invasion, after a year of exchanges of fire during its war with Hamas in Gaza.
The fighting in Lebanon has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, most of them fleeing to Beirut and elsewhere in the north over the past three weeks since the escalation.
Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian actions, has visited schools that have been turned into shelters to host displaced families.
“What struck me is that this war is three weeks old and so many children have been affected,” Chaiban told The Associated Press in Beirut.
“As we sit here today, 1.2 million children are deprived of education. Their public schools have either been rendered inaccessible, have been damaged by the war or are being used as shelters. The last thing this country needs, in addition to everything else it has gone through, is the risk of a lost generation.”
While some Lebanese private schools are still operating, the public school system has been badly affected by the war, along with the country’s most vulnerable people such as Palestinian and Syrian refugees.
″What I’m worried about is that we have hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian children that are at risk of losing their learning,” Chaiban said.
More than 2,300 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes, nearly 75 percent of them over the last month, according to the Health Ministry. In the last three weeks, more than 100 children were killed and over 800 were wounded, Chaiban said.
He said displaced children are crammed into overcrowded shelters where three or four families can live in a classroom separated by a plastic sheet, and where 1,000 people can share 12 toilets. Not all of them work.
Many displaced families found have set up tents along roads or on public beaches.
Most displaced children have experienced so much violence, including the sounds of shelling or gunshots, that they cower at any loud noise, Chaiban said.
Then there is “evacuation orders upon evacuation orders. We’re at the beginning, and already there’s been a profound impact,” he said.
The escalation has also put over 100 primary health care facilities out of service, while 12 hospitals are either no longer working or partially functional.
Water infrastructure has also come under attack. In the last three weeks, 26 water stations providing water to almost 350,000 people have been damaged, Chaiban said. UNICEF is working with local authorities to repair them.
He called for civilian infrastructure to be protected. And he appealed for a ceasefire in Lebanon and in Gaza, saying there needs to be political will and a realization that the conflict cannot be resolved through military means.
“What we must do is make sure that this stops, that this madness stops, that there’s a ceasefire before we get to the kind of destruction and pain and suffering and death that we’ve seen in Gaza,” Chaiban said.
With so many needs, he said, the emergency response appeal for $108 million in Lebanon has only been 8 percent funded three weeks into the escalation.
Funeral service held in Iraq for Iranian general killed with Hezbollah chief
Israel said it carried out the Beirut strike but did not comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration of the Islamic republic’s new president
Updated 15 October 2024
AFP
KARBALA, Iraq: The funeral procession for Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Abbas Nilforoushan, who was killed in an Israeli air strike alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, began in Iraq on Monday, an AFP photographer saw.
Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Nasrallah in the strike on south Beirut.
The Guard Corps said on Friday that Nilforoushan’s body had been recovered from the site of the strike on the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
His body was taken from Beirut to the central Iraqi city of Karbala, considered holy by Shia Muslims.
There it was taken to the shrine of Imam Husayn where a representative of Iraq’s top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, led funeral prayers before a massive crowd.
Mourners chanted “death to Israel” and brandished the flags of Iran, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shia Kataib Hezbollah armed group.
The funeral cortege then moved on to the nearby Al-Abbas shrine before leaving for another Shia holy city, Najaf.
Nilforoushan’s body is due to be sent to the Iranian holy city of Mashhad, according to Sepah news agency, which is affiliated to the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Another funeral ceremony is due to take place in Tehran’s Imam Hossein Square on Tuesday, while Nilforoushan then will be buried in his home town of Isfahan in central Iran, Sepah said.
On October 1, Iran fired some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killings of Nasrallah, Nilforoushan and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July.
Israel said it carried out the Beirut strike but did not comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration of the Islamic republic’s new president.
Israel has vowed to retaliate for the Iranian missile attack, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying the response would be “deadly, precise, and surprising.”