Iran Retaliates Against Israel With Missile Strikes
Objective Facts
Iran intensified attacks against U.S. assets in the Middle East and Israel on Wednesday in apparent retaliation against the killing of the country's security chief Ali Larijani overnight, as the weeks-long conflict shows no signs of abating. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly said Wednesday that its missiles have hit more than 100 military and security targets in the heart of Israeli territories as "revenge" for the killing of Larijani, his son and aide. Iran's Supreme National Security Council has confirmed the death of Larijani, along with his son Morteza Larijani and the head of his office, Alireza Bayat, as well as several guards. The retaliatory attacks on Wednesday killed two people in Ramat Gan in central Israel. As the US–Israeli war with Iran enters its third week, reports are emerging that Israel is potentially running out of air defence interceptors due to Iran's retaliatory attacks.
Left-Leaning Perspective
The Trump administration has offered several evolving explanations — at times exaggerated or at odds with US intelligence — to justify why the attacks were necessary and what the US ultimately hopes to achieve. President Trump and the Pentagon were aware that Iran would target the Strait of Hormuz and global energy producers in response to Operation Epic Fury, with top intelligence officials telling Senate lawmakers that their agencies briefed the Trump administration regularly on how Iran would respond in the event the U.S. carried out an attack. Former national security adviser John Bolton pushed back at President Trump's claim that "nobody" expected Iran to target neighboring countries in retaliation for the U.S-Israeli war against Tehran, saying he briefed Trump on multiple such scenarios in the president's first term, and that on multiple occasions he brought up scenarios in which Iran was attacked and responded with retaliatory strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere. Iran's response appears to be striking civilians and civilian objects and devastating lives and livelihoods across the Gulf, with attacks resulting in at least 11 civilian deaths and at least 268 injuries, with the majority of victims migrant workers. By the tenth day of the war, Iran had fired a total of 300 missiles at Israel, of which nearly half had cluster submunitions, a practice banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and Amnesty International condemned Iran's use of these munitions targeting residential areas as "a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law." Trump and Netanyahu have called on Iranians to overthrow their government, but the United States and Israel are offering only bombs from the sky, forcing protests to stop while Iranians seek safety, and bombing thus makes a popular uprising more difficult to organize. The UN World Food Programme and various economic analysts have warned that the 2026 military escalation in Iran is driving significant, long-term increases in global food prices, with a near-total halt of tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz having disrupted the supply of fuel and essential fertilizers, threatening global food security, with nearly 50% of global urea and sulfur exports, as well as 20% of global liquefied natural gas—a key feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers—transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Israel, especially Netanyahu, has been very consistent in terms of the goals, saying three things: ensuring Iran cannot move forward on a nuclear weapons program and its enrichment program, stopping the ballistic missile program, and keeping the program from being moved underground, and preventing its ability to support armed proxies in the region, including in Lebanon and Hamas and Gaza. Netanyahu and Trump authorized the Israeli military "to target any senior Iranian official for whom an intelligence and operational opportunity arises, without the need for additional approval." Netanyahu stated that the risk of not acting is immeasurably greater, because if they do not act, they will face a nuclear Iran, an Iran with tens of thousands of ballistic missiles, an Iran that will work to destroy them and be immune to their counteractions, and as a people who desire life, they have no choice but to engage in this campaign with the immense combined power of the State of Israel and the United States of America. Netanyahu stated "Ali Larijani was the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, the gang of gangsters that effectively runs Iran," and that "We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people the opportunity to oust it. It won't happen all at once; it won't happen easily. But if we persist, we will give them the chance to take their destiny into their own hands." A joint U.S. and allied statement described "The Islamic Republic's actions represent a dangerous escalation that violates the sovereignty of multiple states and threatens regional stability," with "The targeting of civilians and of countries not engaged in hostilities is reckless and destabilizing behavior." President Trump has argued repeatedly that Europe, and the entire world, will benefit from the U.S.-Israeli war against the Iranian regime.
Deep Dive
The March 18 escalation represents a critical inflection point in the three-week conflict. Iran's decision to launch over 100 missiles targeting Israel and U.S. bases after Israeli strikes killed Larijani and intelligence minister Khatib suggests Tehran views its leadership structure as under existential threat and has shifted from measured retaliation to sustained pressure. Tehran appears intent on sustaining missile fire to maintain pressure on Israel and project resilience, and may also be calculating how prolonged attacks could strain Israel's ability to sustain high interception rates. The intelligence assessments showing Israel is running low on air defense interceptors indicate that Iran's strategy of repeated strikes—even at declining scale—could eventually overwhelm Israeli defenses. On the U.S. side, evidence that the Trump administration was briefed on likely Iranian retaliation against Gulf states and the Strait of Hormuz, yet publicly claimed surprise, suggests either a deliberate rhetorical choice to justify the campaign or a disconnect between intelligence assessment and policy decision-making. Trump was briefed before launching strikes on Iran that Tehran could retaliate against US allies in the Persian Gulf, with prewar intelligence not saying retaliation was certain but it was "on the list of potential outcomes." This creates a credibility problem that left-leaning outlets are exploiting. Meanwhile, right-leaning sources remain focused on the legitimacy of targeting Iranian leadership as part of degrading the regime's military capacity, with less engagement on the predictability question. The humanitarian and economic toll continues to mount. Health authorities have reported about 1,300 killed in Iran, 968 in Lebanon and 16 in Israel since the war began on Feb. 28. The near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens global food security and has raised U.S. energy prices, creating domestic political pressure on Trump that was absent during earlier phases. The EU's refusal to join Trump's call for military assistance to reopen the strait indicates that the conflict's costs are shifting international calculations about U.S. leadership. What remains unresolved is whether the current cycle of assassination and retaliation represents a path toward eventual Iranian military degradation and internal collapse, or a drawn-out attritional conflict with no clear off-ramp. Netanyahu's statements about creating conditions for Iranians to "take their destiny into their own hands" remain vague on post-conflict governance, a gap that critics view as strategically dangerous.