Iran using cluster munitions on Israeli cities in attempt to overwhelm air defenses

Iran is using cluster bombs for its attacks on Israeli cities, officials said, making strikes harder to stop for the Jewish state’s already burdened air defenses.

Images of Tehran’s retaliatory attacks on Israel show evidence of the Islamic Republic’s missiles erupting in the sky and scattering small bomblets across wide areas below, consistent with that of cluster bombs.

The weapons are more difficult to intercept, even for the Iron Dome defense system, with at least three people killed on Tuesday after one of the bombs hit a construction site in central Israel.

Iran has been repeatedly accused of using the weapon in civilian areas, a tactic banned by nations across the world as unexploded bomblets leave lasting dangers in their wake.

While Israel has normally restricted full details of Iran’s attacks, the Jewish state has released more information to educate the public about the dangers of unexploded bombs left behind by cluster munitions.

What are cluster bombs?

As the name implies, cluster bombs carry multiple submunitions within them that are scattered once the missile reaches its target.

The bomblets can be spread across several miles for widespread damage, effectively trading precision for mass coverage.

They were first used by Nazi Germany during the blitzkrieg campaign on the United Kingdom during World War II.

While cluster munitions are not banned under international law, they are barred by the Geneva Conventions for use in civilian areas, with more than 120 nations agreeing not to use the weapons.

Too many bombs to counter

While Israel’s Iron Dome and other air defense systems are capable of intercepting most projectiles, there is little that can be done to counter a cluster bomb once the warhead splits, Yehoshua Kalisky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told the Associated Press.

Israel’s interceptor missiles are specifically designed to catch small rockets being fired from short ranges and lower altitudes, which has proven effective against the neighboring Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups.

The Iron Dome, however, struggles to destroy the clusters once they’ve dispersed into dozens of bomblets.

Roughly half of the projectiles that Iran has been firing at Israel since the war began have been cluster munitions, an Israeli military official said, with the strikes killing at least 12 people.

A future danger to civilians

What makes cluster bombs extremely dangerous is the fact that many of the bomblets can fail to explode upon initial impact, effectively creating land mines that can detonate later and kill civilians.

The Open Source Munitions Portal, which authenticates publicly sourced images of munitions worldwide, has published multiple photos of unexploded submunitions found in Israel this week.

The bombs’ dangerous aftermath was clear during America’s bombing campaigns in Vietnam and Laos, which left unexploded bomblets for decades.

Hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs were also left across southern Lebanon following the 2006 war with Israel.

Despite backlash against the weapon, Iran has been accused of favoring the cluster bombs, with Amnesty International slamming Tehran’s “deliberate use of such inherently indiscriminate weapons” as “a blatant violation of international humanitarian law” during last year’s 12-day war.

With Post Wires