Iran Retaliates Over Nasrallah Killing With Missile Strikes on Israel

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Just hours after Israel launched a U.S.-supported invasion of Lebanon and less than a week after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran's firing of an estimated 200 ballistic missiles into Israel on Tuesday prompted new calls for a complete cease-fire in the region.

Air sirens were blaring across Israeli cities as footage showed anti-aircraft systems lighting up the skies and incoming Iranian missiles exploding on the ground in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it launched the missiles in retaliation for Israel's recent assassination of Nasrallah as well as Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and an Iranian military commander. The massive bombing that killed Nasrallah in Lebanon last week also killed dozens of others, including many civilians, and was carried out with 2,000 lb. bunker-busting munitions.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued his latest condemnation of "escalation after escalation" in the Middle East, nearly a year after Israel launched its full-scale bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.

"This must stop. We absolutely need a cease-fire," said Guterres following Tuesday's latest escalations.

The Biden administration in recent days has claimed that it has urged Israel to use "restraint" in Lebanon, but on Tuesday Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that "the United States is well postured to defend U.S. personnel, allies, and partners in the face of threats from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist organizations."

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that Iran's strikes on Israel are "what a vacuum of American leadership and blind U.S. support of militarism has delivered," warning that "a spiraling conflict with mass devastation and rampant insecurity from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea" has taken hold.

"The Biden administration's support for Israel's escalate-to-deescalate policy has massively failed," said the group. "Many appear to have bought into the wrong notion that the conflicts across the region have military solutions, which is 100% false. Only through diplomacy can threats to Israel, the United States, and Iran be reduced and security restored."

Assal Rad, author of State of Resistance: Politics, Culture & Identity in Modern Iran, pointed to recent remarks made about Israel's incursion in Lebanon by U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who said Monday, "At times, military pressure can enable diplomacy."

"Same logic applies to Iran, right?" asked Rad.

The IRGC said after the strikes in Israel that it had shown "restraint" in July when it refrained from attacking Israel in retaliation for Haniyeh's killing.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, called on U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to "use their full authority to put an immediate stop to this conflict and prevent further bloodshed.”

"What has become abundantly clear is that there is no military solution to the crisis," said Mitchell. "The only pathway to peace is through diplomatic means."

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan condemned Iran's attack as a "significant escalation" and said the Biden administration would work to "secure first and foremost American interests and then to promote stability to the maximum extent possible."

Rad noted that Israel's assault in Gaza—which has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians—and its strikes in and invasion of Lebanon were not viewed by the U.S. as a "significant escalation."

NIAC called on policymakers in the U.S. "not to fall back to a kneejerk and blind defense of Israel in this moment of crisis, but instead to warn about the headlong plunge to wider war and urge diplomacy to halt the tit-for-tat cycle and move toward de-escalation and a cease-fire."

"It is clear that Benjamin Netanyahu's government is succeeding in its goal of dragging the U.S. into a wider war," said the group. "This may benefit his personal political ambitions, but it is a disaster for everyone else. The blank check for Bibi must be cut."