Israel weighs response to Iran's attack, with each choice a risk

Tel Aviv: Israeli leaders on Tuesday were debating how best to respond to Iran's unprecedented weekend airstrike, officials said, weighing a set of options calibrated to achieve different strategic outcomes: deterring a similar attack in the future, placating their American allies and avoiding all-out war.

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.

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.

Iran, which signaled that it saw the attack as an Israeli break in the norms of the shadow war, felt compelled to retaliate strongly, analysts said, in order to establish deterrence and maintain credibility with its proxies and hardline supporters.

Israel does not want Iran to conclude that it can now attack Israeli territory in response to an Israeli strike on Iranian interests in a third country, some of the officials said.

The officials described the following options, and their downsides, from which the Israeli leaders are choosing a response:

- Conduct an aggressive strike on an Iranian target, such as a Revolutionary Guard base, in a country other than Iran like Syria. (The drawback is that it lacks the symmetry of responding to a direct attack on Israel with a direct attack on Iran.)

- Strike a mostly symbolic target inside Iran. (Such a move would likely require US consultation and would risk angering the Americans who have advised against such a strike.)

- Conduct a cyberattack on Iran's infrastructure. (Doing so could expose Israel's cyber capabilities prematurely and would not be an in-kind response to a major airstrike.)

- Accelerate small attacks inside Iran, including targeted assassinations, carried out by the Mossad. (Israel does not claim responsibility for such attacks, so they fail to match the public nature of Iran's strike.)

Other Israeli options include doing nothing, or adopting a more diplomatic approach, including a boycott of Iran by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), other officials said.