Suspected Israeli warplanes bombed Iran's embassy in Syria on Monday, a marked escalation in a war pitting Israel against its regional adversaries, and Tehran said the strike killed seven military advisers including three senior commanders.
Reuters reporters at the site in the Mezzeh district of Damascus saw emergency workers clambering atop rubble of a destroyed building inside the diplomatic compound, adjacent to the main embassy building. Emergency vehicles were parked outside. An Iranian flag hung from a pole by the debris.
Okay, isn't bombing an embassy an absolutely insane escalation? Even throughout WW1, WW2, or any other war in the past century, no country was crazy enough to undermine the sanctity of diplomacy like this and antagonize everyone.
The only other time this has happened in history was when NATO bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and even here the US — the most war-mongering nation on the planet — apologized, said it was a mistake (though it definitely wasn't — it was removed from the list of prohibited targets beforehand and struck 3 separate times), and paid for it to be rebuilt. Israel is completely unhinged.
Yes. This is generally agreed upon as being a terminal escalation.
Attacking diplomatic missions very quickly turns into no diplomacy between the two countries. This doesn’t leave many options other than military actions on the table.
Okay, isn't bombing an embassy an absolutely insane escalation?
Yep. There's literally two countries in the world who could get away with it without causing a major diplomatic crisis if not downright war: Israel and the US.
The US has commissioned entire offices devoted to ensuring striking an embassy doesn't happen again. Millions are spent every year to update the (surprisingly ever-changing) locations of embassies around the world so they don't make the same mistake in the future. Whatever the thought process was that "allowed" a strike then has been eliminated and then some.
Little nuance here, Syria and Iran don't get along, and Israel doesn't have any particular problem with Syria, they have a problem with a nominally Syrian area controlled by an Iranian backed militia. Syria will do nothing, probably thinks this is funny. Iran might.