Israel pledged that it will \u201cexact a price\u201d from Iran as the country weighs its response to an unprecedented overnight barrage of drone and missile strikes while facing international pressure to de-escalate. <\/p>\n
The overnight attack \u2013 which saw Tehran launch a series of strikes at Israel over a five-hour period \u2013 threatens to tip the crisis in the Middle East into an untempered regional war. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s war cabinet has been authorized to respond to the attack and met on Sunday, with one of its members, Benny Gantz, saying the \u201cevent is not over.\u201d <\/p>\n
He cited the need to \u201cbuild a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant earlier said Israel had \u201cthwarted this attack in a way that is unparalleled\u201d but added \u201cwe must be prepared for every scenario.\u201d In his first comments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said \u201cwe have intercepted, we have contained. Together we shall win.\u201d <\/p>\n
But Israel is being urged by Western allies to de-escalate an intensely fraught situation on Sunday and close, at least for now, a weeks-long chapter of uncertainty and confrontation that had spiraled out of Israel\u2019s war with Hamas that has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza and caused a humanitarian disaster in the enclave. <\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s retaliatory attack had been anticipated since a suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria earlier this month, and finally came late on Saturday when over 300 projectiles \u2013 including around 170 drones and over 120 ballistic missiles \u2013 were fired toward Israeli soil. Approximately 350 rockets were fired from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah, according to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Israeli authorities said \u201c99%\u201d of the projectiles were intercepted with help from allies including the US, the UK and France. The only injury reported was a 7-year-old girl who was seriously wounded by shrapnel. <\/p>\n
The reprisals brought years of clandestine conflict between the countries into the open, and marked the first time the Islamic Republic had launched a direct assault on Israel from its soil. <\/p>\n
Israel and Iran have long been rivals, but tensions escalated in the wake of Hamas\u2019 attacks on Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead. Iran backs a web of proxies across the Middle East that have frequently clashed with Israel since the attacks. <\/p>\n
The war cabinet meeting lasted for hours and ended Sunday night without a decision on how Israel will respond, according to an Israeli official. <\/p>\n
The war cabinet is determined to respond but has yet to decide on the timing and scope, the official said. One of the key dilemmas facing the cabinet is determining how quickly Israel should respond. The official said the Israeli military has been tasked with coming up with additional options for a response. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, Iran said a \u201cnew equation\u201d in its adversarial relationship with Israel had been opened, and warned of a \u201cmuch bigger\u201d assault on the country should Netanyahu decide on a tit-for-tat attack. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have decided to create a new equation, which is that if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, anywhere, and at any point we will retaliate against them,\u201d the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami told Iranian state TV. The \u201cZionist regime\u201d is a term Iran uses to refer to Israel. <\/p>\n
Earlier, Sardar Bagheri, the Chief of Staff of Iran\u2019s Armed Forces, had said: \u201cIf the Zionist regime responds, our next operation will be much bigger.\u201d <\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s attacks targeted the Israeli airbase from which, it said, the strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus was launched. Iranian ballistic missiles that reached Israel fell on the airbase in southern Israel, and caused only light structural damage, Hagari said. <\/p>\n
Bagheri said that from Iran\u2019s perspective, the military operation against Israel \u201chas concluded.\u201d But he emphasized that Iranian armed forces remain on high alert and are prepared to \u201cact if necessary,\u201d according to an interview on state IRINN TV on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Those warnings came as Western nations urged Israel to descend from the brink of open warfare with its foe. <\/p>\n
Biden told Netanyahu he should consider the events of Saturday night a \u201cwin\u201d as Iran\u2019s attacks had been largely unsuccessful, and instead demonstrated Israel\u2019s \u201cremarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel has told the US that it\u2019s not \u201clooking for a significant escalation with Iran,\u201d a senior Biden administration told reporters Sunday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re looking to protect themselves and defend themselves,\u201d the official said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe president was very clear that we\u2019re going to help defend Israel, and he made very clear to the prime minister last night that we do have to think carefully and strategically about risks of escalation,\u201d the official added. <\/p>\n
Biden has meanwhile reiterated that the US\u2019s commitment to Israel\u2019s security against threats from Iran and its proxies remains \u201cironclad.\u201d <\/p>\n
Showing some of the domestic pressure Netanyahu faces, two hardline government ministers called for a firm response. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a retaliation that \u201cresonates throughout the Middle East,\u201d while National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Israel should \u201cgo crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n
Calls for restraint have also been made across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, a major regional rival to Iran, stressed the importance of \u201cpreventing any further exacerbation\u201d of the crisis, while Qatar, which enjoys close economic relations with Iran, expressed \u201cprofound concern.\u201d The United Arab Emirates warned of \u201cnew levels of instability\u201d if the episode was not closed. <\/p>\n
Iran had vowed to retaliate after accusing Israel of bombing its diplomatic complex in Syria earlier this month. <\/p>\n
The airstrike destroyed the consulate building in the capital Damascus, killing at least seven officials including Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran\u2019s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Iran\u2019s foreign ministry said at the time. <\/p>\n
Zahedi, a former commander of the IRGC\u2019s ground forces, air force, and the deputy commander of its operations, was the most high-profile Iranian target killed since then-US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and has been updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Israel pledged that it will \u201cexact a price\u201d from Iran as the country weighs its response to an unprecedented overnight barrage of drone and missile strikes while facing international pressure to de-escalate. The overnight attack \u2013 which saw Tehran launch a series of strikes at Israel over a five-hour period \u2013 threatens to tip the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}