{"id":292457,"date":"2024-08-06T06:11:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T06:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=292457"},"modified":"2024-08-08T06:04:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T06:04:10","slug":"us-and-uk-expected-to-be-drawn-in-as-iran-prepares-retaliation-against-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=292457","title":{"rendered":"US and UK expected to be drawn in as Iran prepares retaliation against Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant<\/p>\n

Dan Sabbagh \u2013 The Guardian Aug 5, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

As Israel braces for what appears to be a likely Iranian retaliation<\/a>, it is almost certain western and regional powers will be drawn in. Overnight, Yoav Gallant, Israel\u2019s defence minister, briefed his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, discussing according to Israel\u2019s readout \u201ca series of scenarios\u201d and corresponding \u201cdefensive and offensive capabilities\u201d should Tehran attack.<\/p>\n

Gallant held a similar discussion with the UK defence secretary, John Healey, on Friday, giving the new Labour minister \u201can operational situation assessment\u201d, Israel<\/a> said. A day later Britain indicated it was moving military assets into Cyprus to prepare for a possible evacuation of UK nationals from Lebanon. The need for heightened readiness in the Middle East will not be lost on the RAF and its Typhoon pilots stationed at the Akrotiri airbase, either.<\/p>\n

Iran appears set on responding swiftly to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas<\/a> political leader killed in Tehran, whose killing Iran blames on Israel. It issued a warning notice to aviation on Monday of danger from the centre, west and north-west of the country, where its missile launch sites are based.<\/p>\n

The expectation is that Iran\u2019s response will be more extensive than its response to Israel\u2019s airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus in April, when a combination of 300 missiles and drones were fired at Israel \u2013 and the fear is that Tehran\u2019s proxy ally Hezbollah could be drawn in, using its own stock of between 120,000 and 200,000 unguided missiles and drones to strike with more intensity than before. The goal is to overwhelm Israel\u2019s air defences, and so inflict serious damage on industrial sites and population centres.<\/p>\n

In April, the complex attack from Iran was essentially prevented from causing any meaningful damage by Israel\u2019s anti-missile Arrow 2 and 3 air defence, while fighter jets from the US, UK and Jordan knocked out slower-moving drones. It is expected that a US-led coalition is on standby again, despite reports of tensions during a phone call last Thursday between the US president, Joe Biden, and Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

Though the US president reportedly told Netanyahu not to take him for granted, as the Israeli thinktank INSS observes, realpolitik forces Biden into helping out. Without the assistance of the US in the skies \u2013 and of its allies, including a UK prime minister who would be authorising military action for the first time \u2013 Israel faces the risk of sustaining a level of loss that would \u201ccompel it\u201d to retaliate further and risk a wider conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Eldad Shavit and Chuck Freilich, authors of the INSS analysis, argue that a fresh US military deployment of warships and a squadron of fighter jets, announced on Friday, is \u201cintended to minimise as much as possible\u201d the risk of Iran \u201clanding a blow that would force Israel to respond harshly and put the United States in a dilemma of how to act\u201d. The argument has a clear logic, although Iran, too, has a better idea of the likely defence plan.<\/p>\n

It is often observed that in a diplomatic and military crisis the biggest risk is of miscalculation \u2013 a violent move that leads to an outbreak of escalating tit-for-tat. The brazen killing of Haniyeh has already angered Tehran to a degree not seen since the current crisis started on 7 October; now it appears the critical point is how far Israel\u2019s air defences hold, with the help of allies, whose support Netanyahu has nevertheless strained repeatedly for months.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant met his US and UK counterparts to brief them on an expected Iranian retaliatory strike for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh. In preparation, no doubt, for direct US and UK intervention in the conflict on Israel’s behalf <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":285444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292457"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292478,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292457\/revisions\/292478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/285444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}