Iran said it launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles towards Israel on Saturday in a major attack following days of acute tension building up in the region and warnings from the US and elsewhere about a wider conflict erupting.
Air attack warning sirens began wailing over Jerusalem just before 2am local time on Sunday after the weapons were fired a few hours earlier from Iran with US and Jordanian military assisting Israel’s air defenses in intercepting the first incoming barrage.
With weapons believed to be still in the air en route to Israel, Iran’s mission to the United Nations posted on X: “Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded.”
However, it threatened more severe action in the face of further Israeli aggression and warned the US and Jordan specifically not to assist Israel.
Edit: here are links to the NYT and BBC live feeds.
Edit 2: updated summary and archive to reflect article changes.
It’s the Middle East. It has a huge amount of a particularly important strategic resource. Additionally, the countries there generally have, at best, a cold relationship with the US. If not outright adversarial.
Israel is smack dab in the middle of it with access to the sea. It holds a massively important strategic military and geopolitical position for the US.
So, sure, what the other poster says is definitely part of it, but I think what primarily drives US support to be seemingly unequivocal is that the US/Israel alliance is also very important to US geopolitical influence as well.
As for that natural resource, we have quite a bit of it here in the United States itself. So we wouldn’t have to rely on them to get that resource. That, and if the US really wanted to break away, they could very seriously incentivize the purchase of electric mobility devices, such as electric bikes and scooters and cars.
The US is 10th on the list of oil reserves
6 of those above the US are in the middle east (or northern Africa, depending on how you draw your boundaries). 5 of those have more than twice the amount of the US. One has probably around 5x. The US is burning through reserves right now, which is strategically a bad long term idea, IMO.
I agree with you that certain dependance can go away if we shift to electric. However, militarily speaking, oil is going to be king probably for a long time. And that’s what this is about. Not just making sure civilians can drive down the road cheaply, although that certainly plays a role.
Oil is crucial for agriculture and the production of vital chemicals and materials. We really shouldn’t be burning it.
Gotta tell Ya’ll Qaeda that they’ll have to give up their trucks but they can keep plastic straws.
The US is a net exporter of oil. They don’t have a hard dependency on the list and it doesn’t matter if they’re 6th or 60th - they have more than they need.
For now. They aren’t just thinking this very second.
Israel is #91 on that same list. Israel consistently increases tensions with our trade partners in the region. They are a liability to our trade negotiations, not an asset.
This is not accurate. There are multiple nearby allied/NATO countries in the area as well as carrier groups in the Med that more than cover what Israel offers us.
Israel does not offer us a unique strategic advantage in any scenario. They only increase tensions with our existing trade partners in the region and threaten to bring us into wars that they start. They are very much using us, and have been for decades. We allow/justify it because of religious and traditional reasons. Nothing more.
Biden is backing Israel because some of the U.S.'s biggest political donors (AIPAC) will shift their support back to the Republicans in the upcoming election if he doesn’t. Mark my words: Biden will back off Israel support the instant it becomes too late for certain donors to negatively affect the upcoming election.