Why is Israel attacking Iran and vice versa?

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Can anyone explain, simply and objectively, what is happening between Israel and Iran? It seems mad to me that Israel would take on another war right now!

And no @Stripes56 I do not care know or even care now to respond to you any longer.

The reason being you are being deliberately provocative and also refusing to acknowledge that Hamas shouldn't hide amongst civilians and civilian buildings

I completely agree Hamas shouldn’t hide amongst or under buildings in tunnels
Hopefully you agree that Israel shouldn’t kill indiscriminately and should be proportionate in their killing

The question I am asking is whether you think killing huge number of civilians to target minor Hamas members is proportionate when Israel can be precise

Of course you can choose not to engage in this…

@Stripes56
Supporters of the Israeli government and IDF have no compassion or empathy for innocent Palestinian civilians, child or adult who have suffered decades of oppression and occupation. Which is why the idea of a proportionate response is an anathema to them.

It is terribly sad that even though over 50,000 people have died and no doubt tens of thousands injured. It does not seem to appease those who see to want every Palestinian pay for the sins of Hamas.

Conversely, Israel can commit no wrong in their eyes, despite contravening International Law, abusing human rights and commiting war crimes for many years.

They could have exchanged prisoners for the hostages, identified the participants of the Oct 7th terrible events and severely dealt with them alone, without all the collateral damage and pain to others.

But, instead they have taken advantage of a terrible tragedy to grab land and a reign of terror upon anyone in their way.

Iran is the greatest threat to peace in the ME, and to the world at large. All ME terrorism for years now comes back to Iran.

If Israel would be left to its own devices, not attacked and allowed to be, there would be peace in the region. Whereas if Iran would be left to its own devices there would be bloodshed and chaos.

This is absolute nonsense. Why do people say things like this? There will be some supporters of Israel who fit what you say, but mostly not on this board.

As for Israel's response to 7 October, firstly why the hell should Israel exchange anyone for perfectly innocent, illegally kidnapped hostages. Second, they have exchanged prisoners. At a rate of more than 2 prisoners per 1 hostage. Including convicted terrorists and murderers. For entirely innocent hostages. And finally, oh yes, identifying the perpetrators and dealing with them? Well thats what they have been doing, as far as they can but its not as if Hamas are playing nice and handing them over, is it? Nowhere in your post do you hold Hamas responsible for anything.

I thought this cartoon in Guardian yesterday very appropriate

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jun/15/ella-baron-escalation-israel-iran-cartoon

The comments echo our sentiments- which makes you feel that their is sense in the world, as you might doubt that from some posters on this board.

@Squirrelandnuts
For once I am thankful for the MAGA crowd. I really hope Trump listens to his supporters on the ground as well as in his administration who say let Israel fight and fund its own wars. That actually may de-escalate the situation in the ME at present.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/maga-israel-iran/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-strikes-on-iran-divide-trumps-coalition-pitting-hawks-against-isolationists/amp/

You should probably find a map and check the location of the IDF HQ.

It’s a building with admin staff in. As we have both government and naval admin buildings in central London. It’s a weird propagandist argument. They’re not shooting rockets out of the middle of tel aviv?! Air bases etc are in the middle of the desert - not built up populated areas.
sorry - are you defending Hamas hiding under hospitals and UN schools? You know you can, like I do, support and donate to Palestinians without supporting their terrorist leadership and the institutions that try to keep them as forever refugees rather than building up proper infrastructure and hope for them.
did you know on October 7 tens of thousands of gazans entered Israel every day on work permits? Hamas knew the attack would mean screwing over their people - good civilians with good jobs - but they didn’t care.
don’t worry - I didn’t come on here for a ding dong - but claiming Israeli leadership is hiding behind civilians to create some sort of common evil is…nonsense. Criticise Netanyahu sure. But no need to spread rubbish. Have a good day and praying for the safety of Iranian and Israeli civilians caught up in this scary time x

I’ve said this on another thread but I am truly staggered by the open support of Iran and the utter ignorance of certain posters. There is really no depths that some will go to in order to discredit or criticise Israel.

So true ... all the G7 leaders have declared that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, yet there are Mumsnetters who think they should be allowed to in the interests of "other countries have them ... let's be fair and let Iran have them". Unbelievable!

G7 joint statement from Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen:

"We affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel," G7 leaders said in the statement.

"Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror," the statement added and said the G7 was "clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon."

https://www.politico.eu/article/g7-leaders-iran-can-never-have-a-nuclear-weapon/

Agree the posts lately have been off the scale.

It's anti western sentiment. I'm wondering with all the dislike of a western way of life, why are they on a British forum? Shouldn't they find a lovely little Iranian chat board? Or a platform hosted by Hamas? Why benefit from the liberties in societies such as in the UK but trash this way of life in favour of some inhumane totalitarian regime? I don't want such a regime to have nuclear power. Iran is a self declared enemy of America and Europe. If they were nice guys, it probably would be ok for them to have peaceful nuclear capacity. But they're not.

50k ‘innocents’ @Hfox ? So you regard Hamas, their supporters and ALL those who took part in Oct 7th an innocents?

Hamas is innocent of starting a war and using their people as human sacrifices? They murdered whole families, cut off heads, gang raped then mutilated women and girls before murdering them, kidnapped children, cheered at their dead bodies, out of innocence?

Hezbollah are innocents, the Houthis are innocents, the Iranian regime are innocents?

The only guilty party is the greedy Israel, the only Jewish state, for defending its country? Greedy Israel who could have wiped out the Palestinians within days if they had wanted to.

Greedy Israel who are world leaders in innovation in medicine, tech, engineering, agriculture, which they share with the world. Who are often first on the scene to help in worldwide catastrophes, who save the lives of their enemies (remember Sinwar?), that tiny nation of 9 million who have probably contributed most to the world than any other, and are doing so now in fighting a terror regime that every Western government wants gone.

The only disgusting disease I see from your post is Jew hatred, no matter how cowardly you are to admit it, and it is an insidious disease that makes people deny facts and reality, even when it’s right in front of their face, and side with evil.

Insanity.

@Hfox

"it’s maddening how vile the supporters of Zionists are.. sickening! Now they have attacked Iran to take attention off them. Pure evil"

Think about this for a moment.

After the Six Day War Jordan took in the Palestinian leadership / armed group and in return for their compassion and help they were rewarded with an attempted coup. They were then expelled by Jordan.

The Palestinian leadership / armed group were then taken in by Lebanon and in return for their compassion and help were rewarded with a civil war. They were then expelled by Lebanon.

The Palestinian leadership/ armed group were then taken in by Libya and in return for their compassion and help were rewarded with using Libya as firstly a base for terrorist actions ultimately leading to another civil war.

Iran and Hezbollah and Houthis then took the Palestinian leadership under their wing offering support and military action on behalf of Hamas.

This led firstly to the destruction of Hezbollah leadership and ability and the UN taking their peace monitoring duties more seriously.

It also led to the destruction of the Houthis military capabilities and the Houthis seeking and agreeing a peace deal with the US.

Lastly we are now seeing the rapid demise of the Islamic State of Iran and the current regime collapsing.

If you haven't picked up on it, there is a pattern here and the lesson is stay away from supporting or helping the Palestinian cause.

I wouldn't say mainly intelligent - I'd say a broad spectrum of intelligent to stupid, and sensible to insane people. And if you know nothing about the specific subject matter it's very difficult to tell who is which!

Hamas seem quite proud of what they did on Oct 7th though. That involved small children being slaughtered and being taken hostage They vowed to do it again and again.

Israel do a lot more than any other army to prevent civilian casualties and the civilian casualties in Gaza are directly due to Hamas’s actions. The civilian deaths in Gaza are the lowest ratio to combatants in the history of warfare despite no shelters or places of refuge being opened up.

You can stick your fingers in your ears but facts are facts.

Do you not know about the connection with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis?

You drip with venom for ‘Zionists’ and those who don’t support terrorism.

’Zionists’ means Jews right?

The civilian deaths in Gaza are the lowest ratio to combatants in the history of warfare despite no shelters or places of refuge being opened up. @DigitalInteractor

Is that so? Its the kind of bold assertion that needs a source,... please.

one thing that bothers me is the implication of the statement "Hamas are using human shields" is that the answer is just blow up the humans as well and the rest of the world should be alright with that. It is awful

@DigitalInteractor Israel do a lot more than any other army to prevent civilian casualties and the civilian casualties in Gaza are directly due to Hamas’s actions. The civilian deaths in Gaza are the lowest ratio to combatants in the history of warfare despite no shelters or places of refuge being opened up.

This is wildly incorrect and straight up propaganda from Netanyahu.

Reports from several sources, including the UN put the civilian casualties at a minimum of 70%.
Despite this Israel continue to lie and contradict all impartial bodies.

“The ratio of combatant-to-civilian casualties in Gaza should be recognized as a historical achievement of protecting civilian lives” Propaganda by The Times of Israel.

Zionism is an ideology. Judaism is a religion. Very different and to be treated as such.

@Bananas1827

"Zionism is an ideology. Judaism is a religion. Very different and to be treated as such."

Except the terms Zionist and Jews are deliberately used interchangeably to avoid accusations of anti semitism.

So comments that would clearly be anti semetic and have echos of 1930s Nazi Germany are disguised by replacing the word "Jew" with Zionist.

You see it frequently on comments here: "Oh I'm not anti Jews just anti Zionist ". You then ask them to define Zionism and then either get some made up bollocks back or some emotional made up tirade along the lines of "so you are happy to support 4 year Gazan toddlers in cute party dresses being ripped apart by Israeli trained killer dogs with lasers" etc etc.