I mean they regularily bomb other countries without any repercussion so they really might thought so. Being protected by Uncle Sam tends to erode brains in power.
israelis are completely disconnected from international law, they're just completely out of bounds and they are clueless about it. they actually are stupid and spoiled enough that they think are immune to everything
if your justification for an airstrike is that you were an eepy lil country who doesn’t know the rules of war, you don’t get to have a nuclear option. You’re trying to have it both ways. You can either be the smol bean enclave state that is just so so anxious and doesn’t mean it but lashes out sometimes and you can’t blame them for it or you can be an entity with the power to immediately dissolve a city
Those records also outlined the range of responses from Iran that the Israeli government expected, among them small-scale attacks by proxies and a small-scale attack from Iran. None of the assessments predicted the ferocity of the Iranian response that actually occurred. From the day of the strike, Iran vowed retaliation, both publicly and through diplomatic channels. But it also sent messages privately that it did not want outright war with Israel — and even less so with the United States — and it waited 12 days to attack. American officials found themselves in an odd and uncomfortable position: They had been kept in the dark about an important action by a close ally, Israel, even as Iran, a longtime adversary, telegraphed its intentions well in advance. The United States and its allies have spent weeks engaged in intensive diplomacy, trying to tamp down first the expected Iranian counterattack, and now the temptation for Israel to reply in kind.
Bro, Israel has got to be the most incompetent of all allies. And Iran the most professional enemy. Like...maybe the US should just formally change alliances at this point.
Iranian officials say the attack was designed to inflict limited damage. U.S. officials have been telling Israeli leaders to see their successful defense as a victory, suggesting that little or no further reply is needed. But despite international calls for de-escalation, Israeli officials argue that Iran’s attack requires yet another response, which Iran says it would answer with still more force, making the situation more volatile.
I'm pretty sure this is the US' way of provoking Iran to start WW3 while having making out that it isn't supporting Israel's actions. "Oh haha we keep telling Israel they're going to hard but gee gosh they just won't listen. What? Stop supplying them with weapons? no"
they didn't see a strike on a high-level Iranian target in Syria as a provocation
If that were true (it absolutely isn’t), they’d be the dumbest statesmen on the planet. That’s the excuse they’re going with, “we’re extremely stupid”.
Waiting, they said, would allow international pressure for Israeli restraint to build, and could let Iran think that it had set new ground rules for the conflict, which Israel considered unacceptable. Among the leaders making that argument, according to three Israeli officials, were Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, former military chiefs of staff who were in the Parliamentary opposition to Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government and are usually considered less hawkish, but who joined the war cabinet last fall.