Iran has sent swarms of drones and missiles towards Israel on Saturday night, in response to a suspected Israeli strike on its consular building in Damascus.
Although Israel said that it had intercepted 99% of the missiles and drones launched by Iran, it has vowed revenge.
In a statement on Sunday, Israel’s war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said “this event is not over”. He added that Israel will “exact a price” from Iran in response to its mass missile and drone attack “when the time is right for us,” reported BBC.
Israel has a number of options to respond. Many countries in the region and across the world have called for restraint. Israel could heed to their advice and exercise what is called “strategic patience.”
According to BBC, this entails refraining from responding in kind and instead targeting Iranian proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or other military sites in Syria, as Israel has been doing for years.
Israel could also respond by launching a series of similar, carefully calibrated, long-range missile attacks against the bases from which Iran launched its strikes on Saturday night.
This would mark the first time that Israel had attacked Iran directly, and Iran would consider it an escalation.
Israel has another option, which is to escalate further by broadening its potential response to include direct strikes against bases, training camps and command-and-control centers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
This move would be seen by Iran as an escalation and could lead to further retaliation, which might drag in the US and lead to a full-scale war between Iran and the US forces in the region.
In the worst case scenario, Iran could also decide to close the Strait of Hormuz, by using mines, drones and fast attack crafts, blocking the passage of nearly quarter of the global oil supplies and igniting a wider regional war.
