The feared reprisal had been almost two weeks in the making. But when Iran finally pushed the button on its retaliatory attack against Israel late on Saturday, it appeared to amount to little more than a drawn-out light show, resulting only in minor damage to some remote Israeli military infrastructure and the injury of a seven-year-old girl from a Bedouin community. Analysts say the Iranian operation was designed to fail from the start and had been carefully choreographed to avoid triggering an all-out regional war. At least for now.
The whole world held its breath when, a few hours before midnight on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the Islamic Republic had launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel, sending a barrage of drones and, a little later in the night, missiles towards Tel Aviv.
