Israel-Iran crisis: Options and dilemmas
Iran's attack on Israel, an immense barrage that included hundreds of ballistic missiles and exploding drones, changed the unspoken rules in the archrivals' long-running shadow war. In that conflict, major airstrikes from one country's territory directly against the other had been avoided.
Given that change in precedent, the calculus by which Israel decides its next move has also changed, said the Israeli officials who requested anonymity to discuss Iran.
«We cannot stand still from this kind of aggression,» Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the spokesperson for Israel's military said Tuesday. Iran, he added, would not get off «scot-free with this aggression.»
As Israel's war cabinet met to consider a military response, other countries were applying diplomatic pressure to both Israel and Iran in the hopes of de-escalating the conflict.
Almost all of the missiles and drones fired in Iran's attack early Sunday were intercepted by Israel and its allies, including the United States and Britain.
The attack, Iran said, was a response to an Israeli airstrike this month, in which several armed forces commanders were killed in an attack in Syria. That attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus was different from previous targeted assassinations of individuals in the shadow war.
That strike destroyed a building that was part of an Iranian embassy complex, the sort of facility normally considered off-limits to attack. Israeli officials said the building was diplomatic in name only, and used as an Iranian military and
