Israel has said it has drawn up plans to attack Iran in response to the unprecedented missile and drone strike.
On Sunday night, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the country’s war cabinet had approved both “offensive and defensive action” despite warnings from Western leaders.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, called off an immediate retaliation following intervention from Joe Biden, the US president, who asked him to “think carefully” about his next move.
But Israel said that it reserved the right to strike Iran at a “manner and time” of its choosing. It later told the United Nations that Iran had “crossed every red line” in its attack.
On Sunday night, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss Iran’s attack, after a request from Israel.
Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, told the council: “Regional, and indeed global peace and security are being undermined by the hour. Neither the region nor the world can afford more war.”
Speaking to the security council, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan refused to rule out a strike in retribution of Iran’s attack.
He said: “We are surrounded by Iran’s terror proxies. This attack crossed every red line and Israel reserves every right to retaliate.”
The Iranian ambassador to the UN said Tehran had an “inherent right to respond proportionately” if the US was to join any Israeli military operations against Iran.
US defence officials said Iran fired more than 100 ballistic missiles and hundreds drones and rockets at Israel on Saturday in an attempt to overwhelm its air defences.
The warheads were mostly intercepted by a combination of the Israeli, American, French, Jordanian and British fighter jets and warships.
The attack, which Iran claimed was “legitimate self-defence”, came in response to the bombing of an Iranian consulate compound in Damascus earlier this month.
Israel has pledged to respond to the strike in kind, although the exact nature and timing of its operation is not yet clear.
Rishi Sunak called for “calm heads to prevail”, as Western leaders lined up to urge Israel to refrain from further escalation.
The Prime Minister said: “If this attack had been successful, the fallout for regional stability would be hard to overstate.”
Mr Biden told Mr Netanayhu in a call on Saturday night that the US would not join retaliatory strikes against Iran, and suggested he should “take the win” of minimal damage from the Iranian attack.
“The Israelis made clear to us they’re not looking for a significant escalation with Iran,” a US official said, adding that the president had “made very clear to the prime minister last night that we do have to think carefully and strategically about the risks of escalation”.
Mr Biden and Mr Sunak joined the heads of other G7 countries on a call to discuss the West’s next steps.
The leaders reportedly agreed to put diplomatic pressure on Israel not to inflame tensions with Iran further, risking a full-scale war between the two countries that would engulf the region.
In a joint statement, the G7 leaders said an “uncontrollable regional escalation…must be avoided”, adding: “We will continue to work to stabilise the situation and avoid further escalation.”
Iran said it was not considering another strike “at present” but that it would retaliate again if Israel launched a counter-attack.
“If the Zionist regime persists in its evil actions against Iran, by any means and to any extent, it will face a response at least tenfold greater and of similar nature,” the regime’s Supreme National Security Council said.
The attack came after days of threats by Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader, pledging to “punish” Israel for the death of the consulate strike on April 1.
US intelligence officials gave Israel 72 hours’ notice that the attack was coming, after tip-offs from other Middle Eastern countries given warning by Iran.
On Saturday evening, Iran launched hundreds of drones from its territory towards Israel, followed by ballistic missiles and rockets from its proxy groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
A video released on Iranian state television showed the message “‘we will make you regret it” written on the side of one of the missiles.
Mr Hagari said “99 per cent” of the weapons were shot down by fighter jets and warships from Israel, the US, UK and Jordan, with help from missile defence systems on the edge of Israeli territory.
One Iranian ballistic missile appeared to have been destroyed by Israel while it was outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
The RAF deployed four Typhoon fighter jets from Cyprus, and intercepted almost a dozen of the attack drones over Iraq and Syria, The Telegraph can reveal.
On Sunday, the RAF flew transporter aircraft out of a British airbase in the south of Cyprus towards Turkey, online GPS records show. (The Telegraph)
