Timeline: The key moments that led to Iran’s missile attacks on Israel | Israel attacks Lebanon news

Fears of the outbreak of a wider regional war have increased as Israel vowed to respond to missile fire from Iran on Tuesday evening.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tehran that it had “made a big mistake.”

Iran said about 180 ballistic missiles were fired at Israel in response to Israel’s killings of top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The day before, Israel said it had launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, although Hezbollah denied that Israeli soldiers had crossed the border.

So how could a war that began almost a year ago in Israel and Gaza, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel began its devastating military campaign in the besieged enclave, escalate to this point?

Here is a timeline of the key moments that led to this latest escalation in the conflict between Israel and its regional neighbors:

October 8, 2023 – Hezbollah and Israel begin an exchange of fire

A day after Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel that killed 1,139 people and captured more than 200, Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah began a firefight across the Lebanese-Israeli border in a siege of the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing for almost lasts a year.

The war in Gaza has so far killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

On October 8, Hezbollah said it fired guided missiles and artillery at three military posts in Shebaa Farms, a border region, “in solidarity” with the Palestinians.

Shebaa Farms, claimed by Lebanon, was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Israeli military said it fired artillery into an area in Lebanon from which cross-border mortar fire was fired.

Since then, cross-border fires have occurred almost daily. Hezbollah, founded in 1982 to combat Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon, says it will stop its attacks on Israel once Israel’s attack on Gaza stops.

According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), from October 7, 2023 to September 6, 2024, about 82 percent of the 7,845 attacks between the two forces were carried out by Israeli forces. At least 646 people in Lebanon were killed in Israeli attacks during this period.

Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,768 attacks that killed at least 32 Israelis.

April 1, 2024 – Israel attacks the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria

The Iranian consulate in Damascus was destroyed in an Israeli missile attack that killed 13 people, including the IRGC’s top commander, Major General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and his deputy.

Israel has long targeted Iranian military facilities in Syria, but this attack was the first time it targeted the diplomatic compound itself. Iran promised a response.

April 13, 2024 – Iran fires 300 missiles and drones at Israel

Nearly two weeks after the deadly attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria, Iran has fired a barrage of missiles and drones into Israel.

This was the first time that Iran fired missiles directly into Israeli territory.

However, according to the Israeli army, the majority of the projectiles were intercepted outside the country’s borders with the support of the US, UK and France. Jordan also helped shoot down some missiles that crossed its airspace.

A seven-year-old girl in Israel was seriously injured by rocket fragments from the attack, while others suffered minor injuries. According to US officials, the Iranian airstrike lasted five hours.

July 31, 2024 – Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday, July 31, when an airstrike hit the building where he was staying. Hamas and Iran blamed Israel for the attack, which came just hours after Israel attacked a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.

Haniyeh was in Tehran the day before to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said Haniyeh’s killing had taken the war with Israel to a “new level” and warned of “enormous consequences for the entire region.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised “harsh punishments.”

September 23-27, 2024 – Israel kills more than 700 people in Lebanon

On September 23, the Israeli army said it had carried out more than 650 airstrikes on about 1,600 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon. The attacks hit large parts of the country – from Bint Jbeil and Aitaroun in the south all the way north to Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley.

In just four days, from September 23 to 27, Israeli forces killed more than 700 Lebanese in airstrikes across Lebanon. Among those killed were 50 children and 94 women. It was also confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah, the 32-year-old leader of Hezbollah, was killed.

According to Israeli media reports, the Israeli army claimed the attack was carried out during a massive attack on a residential suburb of Beirut with 85 so-called “bunker buster” bombs. The use of such bombs in residential and other populated areas is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, at least 1,835 Lebanese were injured in the attacks.

On September 24, Hezbollah responded with a drone airstrike on the Israeli naval base at Atlit, south of Haifa.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), attacks by Israel continued, leading to the displacement of at least one million Lebanese. The majority (90 percent) of the evictions occurred in the week before October 1, with many people forced to sleep outdoors on streets, beaches, parks or in their cars.

How did the conflict escalate to this level?

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., said that if there had been a “real effort” early on for a ceasefire in Gaza, “we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

“The key to this escalation is that the US posture has been to deter Iran and its proxies or partners in the region from retaliating against Israel, but has done nothing to prevent Israel from escalating in the first place.” , Parsi told Al Jazeera.

“If Biden had pressured Israel not to escalate, his efforts to stop the others from escalating would have been more successful. Instead, he decided to enable Israel to escalate and protect it.”

Denijal Jegic, an assistant professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, agreed: “Washington and its proxies shield Israel from any responsibility while ensuring that Netanyahu can continue to commit genocide in Gaza and colonial violence across the region and confront anyone who does tries to intervene.” “.

He told Al Jazeera that the international community had failed miserably to intervene in the genocide in Gaza, particularly due to US hegemony and the imbalance of power in the UN institutions.

“The Israeli regime has made it clear that it has no red lines… (it) has continued to escalate because it can,” Jegic said.

“Iran’s measured response cannot be understood as an escalation, but rather as an attempt to deter the Israeli regime’s ongoing daily escalations in the region.”