On Tuesday, night turned to day as the sky above Israel lit up with the bright orange glow of at least 180 missiles launched from Iran, sending millions of Israelis scrambling for bomb shelters. But how did it get to this? Here is a recap of the recent developments in the Middle East:
With Israel winning the war in Gaza against Hamas, another one of Iran’s terrorist proxies (a group who acts as a substitute for another), Hezbollah, increased its firing of missiles at Israel. While most were stopped by Israel’s defense systems and its allies, 60,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate their homes in Northern Israel. Hezbollah, in fear of an attack and to ensure Israel can’t hack their phones for intelligence, switched to pagers. Pagers are wireless devices that only receive and display messages.
On September 17th, every Hezbollah member who had access to a pager felt theirs beep, signaling a message from their command. A couple seconds later, the pagers simultaneously exploded, injuring around 4,000 terrorists and killing at least 13 people.
On the very next day, a new set of explosions rippled across Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, as walkie talkies and other communications devices used by Hezbollah exploded. This explosion killed 14, and wounded around 450.
Then on September 20th, Israel launched an airstrike on a residential building in Lebanon. It was later confirmed that Hezbollah military leader Ibrahim Akil was killed along with 35 other people, 15 being other Hezbollah members during a meeting with an unnamed Palestinian group. The commander of Hezbollah’s elite force was also killed in the strike.
After these successful attacks, over September 21st to September 28th Israel ramped up its attacks by continuing its airstrike campaign. In turn, Hezbollah fired back missiles at Israel. During the air strikes, Israel killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 28th. Seven other high ranking Hezbollah officials and many other key leaders for Hezbollah were killed in the air strikes.
Iran has now launched about 180 missiles into Israel, in what was said was retaliation for the attacks on Hezbollah. This attack resulted in one casualty: a Palestinian man from the West Bank.
Junior Aaron Santiago feels that this attack could explode into an all out Middle Eastern war. “With Iran out right attacking Israel, war in the Middle East seems imminent. My family is part Jewish, so I fear for what will happen in this area.”
As of Tuesday, Israel sent troops into Lebanon for a ground attack, with Israeli troops and Hezbollah troops trading fire. There are no signs of stopping as the Israeli military warned residents of Southern Lebanon to evacuate as it pushes forward in its cross-border attack.
The US, being Israel’s ally and defense partner, has sent warships in the Mediterranean to deter any further attacks. There are as many as forty thousand US service members in the Middle East as of October, with another one of Iran’s terrorist proxies sending daily drone attacks against US warships. This quite possibly could turn into a war between Iran and its proxies versus Israel and its allies. Only time will tell.
