(CN) — The Middle East veered dangerously toward a multi-front war on Monday after Iran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel over the weekend in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on Tehran's consulate in Syria at the start of April.
At an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for restraint and warned of an escalating regional war.
“The Middle East is on the brink,” he said. “The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate.”
Around the globe, world leaders called for calm and restraint, though reactions varied with those in the West strongly condemning Tehran and Iran's allies, most prominently China and Russia, indicating Iran had acted in self-defense following the Israeli attack on its embassy in Syria.
A yearslong “shadow war” between Israel and Iran was quickly turning into an open conflict between the two regional powers with the potential to spiral out of control and drag the United States and its European allies into the conflagration.
The conflict threatens to escalate on several fronts involving Iranian-backed militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories, the Houthis in Yemen and armed groups in Iraq. Besides having Israel as an ally, Western interests in the region under threat include several military bases, oil infrastructure and critical shipping lanes.
Monday was tense as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his war cabinet to plot how to respond to the Iranian attack. In Tehran, Iranian leaders vowed to retaliate with even more ferocity if Israel struck back.
U.S. President Joe Biden condemned Iran's attack but urged Israel to show restraint. He said the U.S. would not get involved in any attack on Iran, but he vowed American support for Israel's defense was “ironclad.”
Overnight between Saturday and Sunday, Tehran launched about 300 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at Israel. Israel said 99% of the incoming projectiles were destroyed, often over Jordan and Saudi Arabia, before they reached their targets.
The Iranian barrage was intercepted by Israeli, American, British, French and Jordanian forces stationed in the region. American forces reportedly helped coordinate the defensive operations.
Reports said damage was limited to an Israeli air base in the southern Negev desert and that a 7-year-old Bedouin girl living in the area was seriously wounded by a missile fragment.
Iranian media claimed the attack caused extensive damage. It remained unclear Monday what happened to Israeli air bases in Negev. Pro-Iranian experts said Tehran could claim its attack was a success because it had forced Israel and its allies to burn through extremely expensive high-tech munitions in deterring relatively inexpensive Iranian projectiles.
It was Iran's first-ever strike against Israel launched from its borders and came in retaliation for an Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus on April 1 that killed several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders.
Prior to launching its assault, Tehran reportedly sought to minimize the extent of damage by providing information about its plans through intermediaries — apparently including Switzerland, Turkey and Iraq — to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Western governments.
Experts on the region said it was a careful attempt by Tehran to balance the need to respond to the attack on its diplomatic building in Syria and to avoid triggering an all-out war.
“There is significant evidence to suggest that Iran intended its response to Israel to be telegraphed, anticipated, and largely ineffectual, as far as inflicting physical damage,” said Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group, a political risk firm. “Sound and some fury, signifying a desire to restore deterrence and also silence domestic critics.”
By Monday, the world anxiously watched to see how Netanyahu's government would respond.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is the single greatest variable and will face strong, competing views in his government,” Teneo, a New York-based political risk firm, said in a research note. “Inside Israel, opinion is split.”
Hard-liners, such as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, want Israel to strike back at Iran “in a big way,” Teneo said.
Another hard-liner, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was threatening to collapse the ruling coalition if Netanyahu’s response wasn't forceful enough. On Sunday, he said Israel must deliver a “crushing attack” against Iran.
More moderate Israeli politicians, such as former defense minister and war cabinet member Benny Gantz, argued Israel “scored a big deterrent win and should avoid a direct war with Iran while operations in Gaza remain unfinished,” Teneo said.
“There will be wide support to signal in some way to the Iranians the gravity of their mistake, although this response may be neither immediate or overt,” Teneo added.
By Monday afternoon, Israeli media reported that the war cabinet had wrapped up discussions on how to respond to Iran. Channel 12, an Israeli television news outlet, reported the war cabinet was looking at a “painful” retaliatory strike against Iran that wouldn't spark a regional war and that would not be blocked by the U.S.
Tensions were running extremely high across the region and added to the anger stemming from the ongoing Israeli incursion in Gaza and Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the West Bank following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, in which more than 1,000 Israelis were killed.
Critics of Israel accused Netanyahu of seeking to deflect attention away from Gaza by hitting the Iranian consulate building in Syria and forcing Tehran to retaliate. In Gaza, Israeli forces are accused of carrying out war crimes against Palestinians and there are signs the Israeli military is getting bogged down in fighting with entrenched and well-hidden Hamas fighters.
Netanyahu is pushing ahead with plans to invade Rafah, a Palestinian city on the border with Egypt where more than 1.5 million Palestinians have taken refuge. The White House and European leaders are urging Netanyahu to step back from a Rafah attack, fearing doing so would further exacerbate the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel invaded following the October Hamas attack. Famine is now gripping the civilian population in Gaza and Israel continues to carry out attacks in a bid to destroy Hamas.
In Europe, meanwhile, the Iranian attack on Israel prompted European governments to raise alert levels and warn about the risk of terrorist attacks.
The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell described the situation in the Middle East as being “on the edge of the cliff” and urged Israel to not cause an escalation with its response to Iran's attack.
Meeting via video conference on Monday, Western foreign ministers with the Group of Seven said they were considering new sanctions on Iran. In Washington, a package of sweeping new sanctions against Iran and its proxies was introduced in Congress.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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