Iran Shrugs off Israeli Strike, Allaying Escalation Fears—for Now

The Israeli military struck inside Iran overnight, with explosions reported over the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, in what appears to be a limited retaliation for Tehran’s attack on Israel last weekend. 

Analysts said the strike on a military air base near the central Iranian city of Isfahan, reportedly carried out by small drones, was calibrated to showcase Israel’s ability to strike in the heart of Iran, without fueling further escalation.

It’s unclear exactly what was damaged in the attack, as Iranian officials and media are being tight-lipped in what experts see as an attempt to downplay it. 

“The position from Iran is very quiet,” said Gregory Brew, an analyst at the Eurasia Group. “They’re treating it sort of as a nothing-burger.”

Isfahan, the third-largest city in the country, is home to Iran’s largest nuclear research complex. On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed there was no damage to the complex. Iranian officials also noted that the country’s air defense thwarted a strike in Tabriz, an area roughly 500 miles north of Isfahan.

“This incident falls within the realm of clandestine maneuvers, affording Iran the capacity to absorb it without feeling the urge for a retaliatory response,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group. “Evidently, Israel sought to showcase its capabilities to Iran without overt provocation.”

The strike came in response to an Iranian attack on Israel last weekend, in which Tehran launched a barrage of over 300 drones and missiles, marking the country’s first-ever direct strike on Israel. That attack was carried out in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win” and not to respond to Saturday’s attack, in which some 99 percent of the drones and missiles were shot down, out of concern that it could fuel a dangerous spiral of escalation between the two foes. U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron similarly advised Netanyahu to exercise restraint, with Cameron saying he hoped any action would be “as limited and as targeted and as smart as possible.” But the Israeli leader insisted that his country would “make its own decisions” about how to respond.

By targeting Isfahan, the Israelis “show their reach, exactly like the Iranians did,” said Alex Vatanka, the director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute. The two countries are “demonstrating capacity to hit the other,” he said. 

“I think right now we are in this very dangerous messaging phase, but [it] doesn’t necessarily need to go in the direction of all-out war or even further escalation,” he added. 

In a potential signal that neither country wishes to further escalate tensions, Friday’s attack drew a relatively muted response from both Israeli and Iranian officials and media. An Iranian official told Reuters that the country did not plan to respond to the incident, which the unnamed official described as an “infiltration” as opposed to an attack.

“Looking at Iranian media this morning, you wouldn’t think that the country, the area of Isfahan—which is home to plenty of military and nuclear facilities and infrastructure—that it had come under some kind of attack last night,” Vatanka said. There’s a “huge effort being done on the Iranian side to downplay this.”

Israel and Iran have fought a shadow war across the Middle East and beyond for decades. While both countries appear keen to draw a line under the recent spate of attacks, “We are not out of the woods entirely,” Vaez said. “Both sides can still miscalculate and deliberately or inadvertently cross the nebulous new red lines.”

“Even if we avoid escalation from this specific episode, we are moving into a new, more tense, more unstable equilibrium between Tehran and Israel,” Brew said.

Ahead of Friday’s attack, U.S. officials said that they had received advance notification of the Israeli strike but did “not endorse” the plan, CNN reported. Speaking at a meeting of G-7 foreign ministers in Capri, Italy, on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington had not been involved in any offensive operation and reiterated that the United States is “committed to Israel’s security” and “committed to deescalating.” 

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that Blinken told the G-7 ministers that Washington had been “informed at the last minute” about the planned attack. 

Yet despite the apparent efforts of officials in both Iran and Israel to have this be the final volley of this volatile flare-up, not everyone seems ready to let matters drop. In the wake of the Israeli attack, the country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted a single-word message on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter: “Lame!” 

His remark was condemned by opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid. “Never has a cabinet minister so badly hurt the country’s security, image and international standing,” wrote Lapid on X, according to a translation by the Times of Israel. “In an unforgivable, one-word tweet Ben Gvir managed to make Israel into a laughing stock, disgracing it from Tehran to Washington.”