An Iranian demonstrator chants slogans while attending an anti-Israeli gathering in Tehran, Iran, early Sunday. Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
TEL AVIV – For several hours on Saturday night, as Iranian missiles streaked through the skies, millions of people in Israel and across a restless region held their breath.
On Sunday morning, Israelis awoke to find their country relatively unscathed, fortified by widespread global support after months of international isolation. The nightmare scenario leaders here had long warned about – a direct attack from Iran – provided a public showcase of the regional coalition and high-tech systems built to repel such an assault.
The five-hour assault, in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, was massive, involving hundreds of killer drones and guided missiles, and supporting fire from at least some of Iran’s regional proxies. But it also came with some warning and appeared calibrated to head off a wider war. Israel leveraged its sophisticated air defense technology and its network of anti-Iran allies, giving its forces operational freedom across large swaths of Middle Eastern airspace. In the end, most interceptions occurred outside of Israeli territory, the military said.
Even Jordan, one of the fiercest public critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, closed its airspace and “helped in the process of the interceptions,” allowing Israel and its allies to shoot down 99 percent of the Iranian munitions, said Yoel Guzansky, a former official on Israel’s National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.
“Never in the history of warfare was such an operation conducted, with so much international coordination, all answering to [U.S. Central Command], and missiles coming from so many places at once, not just Iran” – but also rockets by Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles fired from Yemen and Iraq, Guzansky said.
The U.S.-led regional partnership “proved itself in real time,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, told reporters Sunday morning. “It showed it can face Iran.”
In a statement late Saturday, President Biden highlighted the movement of U.S. aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the past week, which “helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.” On Sunday, the president spoke with members of two Air Force fighter squadrons involved in the response, praising them for “defending Israel from an unprecedented aerial attack.”
Even before the missiles landed, Iranian leaders announced that, in their mind, the score had been settled. “The matter can be deemed concluded,” the country’s mission to the United Nations posted late Saturday, but added a caveat: Should Israel “make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe.” On Sunday, Israel said the situation was “ongoing”: The question was how – and where – it would respond.
Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, which was due to meet Sunday afternoon, said in a video statement that Israel would “exact a price from Iran in a manner and at a time that is right.”
The Israeli army said hits from several ballistic missiles had caused minor damage to the military’s Nevatim air base, in southern Israel. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces released footage of an F-35 returning to the base. One young girl from a Bedouin town in the south was hospitalized for severe shrapnel injuries, her family said.
But Israel and its allies viewed the event as a “win,” said Michael Horowitz, head of intelligence at the risk consultancy group Le Beck International, adding that the country managed to restore some international legitimacy while avoiding any serious damage on the ground.
“The result matters … but so does the intent, and the intent was very clear: not a symbolic attack designed to fail, but a sustained assault designed to actually hit its targets inside Israel,” Horowitz said.
Under the leadership of the United States, Hagari said, the Israeli military has ramped up collaboration with Britain and France over the past six months, as well as other regional states whose names he said he was not at liberty to reveal – probably a reference to Jordan and other Arab nations that have quietly strengthened security ties with Israel, even as they try to contain mounting public fury in their countries over the war in Gaza.
The Iranian attack consisted of 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles, carrying a combined 60 tonnes of explosive material, according to the IDF. Israel countered with the Arrow, an anti-ballistic missile system developed by the United States and Israel, and David’s Sling, a medium- to long-range air defense system put in place to ward off missiles from Iran and Syria, according to Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former IDF spokesman.
The success of Israel’s air defenses gives the government time to formulate a “smart and long-term strategy” rather than reacting under “anger and duress,” Conricus said.
“We intercepted. We thwarted. Together we will win,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X on Sunday morning, a statement that stood out to analysts both for its brevity and its measured tone.“The prime minister actually gave a very succinct statement, and he doesn’t usually do that,” said Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israeli military. “He didn’t say, ‘Now we are going to destroy Iran.’”
But there remains uncertainty over whether Netanyahu can withstand pressure from his more extreme coalition partners to escalate against Tehran. “To create deterrence in the Middle East,” Israel “needs to go crazy,” far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said in a video posted on X on Sunday.
“You have Israel again in the favor of other nations. Diplomatically, that could work well for Netanyahu if he is able to leverage it,” said an Israeli familiar with discussions close to the prime minister, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share private deliberations. “On the other hand, within his cabinet, though, if he doesn’t go after Iran, he will be in trouble with some.”
The United States and other allies that played a role in Sunday’s defensive operation are pushing for restraint, the person said: “He has the Americans and everyone else saying, ‘It happened, no damage was done, we were there for you. Now it’s your turn to be there for us.’”
“We don’t want to see this escalate,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We’re not looking for a wider war with Iran.”
U.S. officials are sending similar messages in private, urging Israel to limit their retaliation and cool regional tensions, a senior administration official said Sunday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive closed-door discussions.
In a matter of hours, analysts said Israel appeared to largely regain its standing in the world community, a position that has been badly eroded by the civilian death toll from its war against Hamas in Gaza and its restrictions on aid delivery, which has put the north of the enclave on the verge of famine.
Noam Tibon, a retired Israeli military general, said the Iranian attack allowed Israel to reset on two fronts: in Gaza, where it has been under growing domestic and international pressure to agree to a cease-fire and a deal to free the hostages still held by Hamas, and on its northern border with Lebanon, where Israel has traded near-daily fire with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group and political party, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes.
“This was the first time in this war that Israel has had a clear victory,” Tibon said. “The West is helping, is standing beside us, and if Israel is not careful, it will reverse all of that just like it did in Gaza.”
Leaders of the Group of Seven countries put out a statement Sunday after an emergency meeting convened by Biden, condemning Iran’s “direct and unprecedented attack against Israel” and warning of an “uncontrollable regional escalation.”
“This must be avoided,” the statement said.
“There has to be a price for what the Iranians did,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research in Israeli military intelligence. “Timing is off the essence here.”
But he added: “It’s very important that we coordinate with the Americans and retaliation is approved and supported by the United States.”
The attack Saturday had some parallels to a smaller Iranian assault on the Ain Al Asad air base in Iraq in January 2020, after influential Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
In that case, Iran responded with a salvo of 16 ballistic missiles, 10 of which hit the base. About half of the U.S. troops there had been evacuated in advance, but 110 still suffered traumatic brain injuries, some of which caused months of health complications.
Then-President Donald Trump declined to respond militarily, saying in the aftermath that “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.”
Following the latest attack by Tehran, the U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting late Sunday.
“It’s very clear that Iran has violated every norm,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as the head of Israel’s National Security Council until last year. “It’s either the international community acts or Israel will need to make its own decisions.”
U.N. restrictions on Iran’s missile program expired in October as part of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the pact also means key guardrails have fallen away, leaving Iran closer to nuclear weapons capability than at any time in the country’s history – which Israel sees as an existential threat.
Eisin said Israel’s overnight military performance had a redeeming quality after the intelligence and security failures on Oct. 7, when the army did not predict the Hamas-led assault and was slow to respond to the carnage unfolding across southern Israel.
In Saturday’s attack, “barely anything hit the ground at all, and that’s a success that gives a boost to our sense of security,” she said. “We need that, because this isn’t over yet.”
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