The Iran-Israel clash is fast turning out into a masterclass in how to spiral a conflict into chaos. On June 19, 2025, an Iranian ballistic missile obliterated parts of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel’s largest southern hospital, wounding dozens and gutting critical infrastructure.
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel called this “war crime,” while Netanyahu swore Iran would “pay a price it cannot imagine.” Meanwhile, social media remains ablaze with counterpoints: Israel’s own strikes on Gaza’s hospitals, allegedly Hamas hideouts, and how it makes this moral outrage ring hollow.
So, what’s behind this hospital-targeting madness, and where’s this escalation headed?
Exploiting loopholes
Let’s talk about the Soroka strike first. Iran launched 30 missiles targeting Israeli military sites, but one—whether by design or error—smashed into Soroka, collapsing wards and shattering Beersheba’s healthcare lifeline. Iran’s claim of hitting an IDF base nearby doesn’t hold water; hospitals are off-limits under the Geneva Conventions, and the wreckage screams civilian toll.
Israel’s air defences, usually a fortress, was buckling under the constant barrage of Iranian attacks over the last few days. This time round, missiles also hit Holon and Ramat Gan—you could take this as a signal that Iran can pierce Israel’s heartland, civilian costs be damned.
Across the other end, Israel’s strikes on Gaza’s hospitals, like Al-Shifa and Al-Aqsa, have been sold as precision hits on Hamas command centres. The IDF’s grainy drone footage of tunnels and AK-47s under hospital beds convinces some, but the body count—medics, patients, kids—tells an ugly story. International law demands proportionality, and levelling medical facilities on shaky intelligence fails that test. Media, including social media, especially the ones that are batting for Iran, hurl this back at Israel: if you bomb hospitals, don’t cry when yours get hit.
The hypocrisy charge sticks. Unfortunately, it looks like both sides have taken to exploiting the “military target” loophole to justify atrocities.
Civilian casualties are “ok” in today’s war
Analytically speaking, hospital strikes aren’t accidents; they’re calculated. For Iran, hitting Soroka was a psychological jab, eroding Israel’s sense of invulnerability while rallying its own base after Israel’s devastating attack on Iran’s Arak nuclear reactor. Israel’s Gaza hospital raids, similarly, aimed to choke Hamas’s operational nerve centres; global condemnation wasn’t the concern. Both know that hits on hospitals are PR disasters—yet both are perhaps sure that the strategic payoff outweighs the backlash.
This tit-for-tat exposes a deeper truth: in modern warfare, civilian infrastructure is a pawn, and moral lines do not exist when push comes to shove.
The escalation’s roots are strategic and existential. Israel’s Friday blitz on Iran’s nuclear sites, killing commanders and scientists, aimed to kneecap Tehran’s bomb-making dreams. A humiliated Iran unleashed 200 missiles and drones. Most got intercepted but a few landed and killed Israeli citizens. Netanyahu is calling this an effort to end Iran’s mullah regime, while Ayatollah Khamenei is framing this as a holy war.
Where is this headed?
Neither can afford to blink—Israel fears a nuclear Iran; Iran dreads a regime collapse under external pressure. Across the American end, Donald Trump is weighing U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is a move that could ignite not only a regional firestorm but put his domestic agenda in serious trouble.
Over at the other end, Russia’s dangling mediation, but we know that their favouring the Iranian Islamic regime puts them on weaker grounds in the eyes of the international community; theirs could be an attempt to maintain the flow of Iranian drones to the Ukraine theatre. Iran’s economy is teetering, but its missile stockpile remains a clear and present threat. Israel’s military edge is unmatched, but domestic unrest—especially now that Iranian missiles have begun cracking through the Iron Dome—would strain its cohesion.
Looks like to me, this is a kind of stalemate that is being dressed as escalation. Why? Because neither side can decisively win without catastrophic costs—Israel can’t invade Iran’s vast terrain (nor would the USA want to), and Iran’s missile barrages can’t topple Israel’s defences. Under such conditions, soft targets like hospitals are being zeroed down upon to project strength while dodging all-out war.
And while these hits—Soroka or Gaza—are perhaps symbols of the coming of an era when no one would be spared in a war, the risk remains tremendous. One stray missile, one misread signal, a slight miscalculation, and this spirals into a conflict neither wants but both can’t escape.
For now, civilians—patients, doctors, families—bear the brunt, while the world watches the Middle Eastern chessboard gradually getting soaked in blood once again.
