US and Europe seek to dissuade Israel from striking back against Iran

The US and its European allies have stepped up efforts to dissuade Israel from striking back against Iran, as Israel’s military chief vowed to respond to Tehran’s unprecedented attack on the country’s territory.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both said western countries were preparing sanctions on Tehran as they sought to prevent escalation into a full-blown Middle East war.

Blinken said Washington was “co-ordinating a diplomatic response to seek to prevent escalation”, while Sunak said the G7 was working on further diplomatic measures against Iran, which is already heavily sanctioned by the west.

US President Joe Biden was “certainly not looking for a war with Iran”, John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson, said on Monday. “We’re not looking to broaden and deepen this conflict in the region.”

The frantic diplomacy came as Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, signalled that his country was preparing a response to the barrage of more than 300 missiles, rockets and drones fired by Iran on Saturday.

“We are looking ahead and weighing our [next] steps, and this launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs into the territory of the State of Israel will be met with a response,” he said.

Halevi spoke on Monday after Israel’s five-man war cabinet met for a second day to discuss its response to Iran’s attack.

He said the IDF “can handle Iran” and “act forcefully against Iran in places near and far”. But he also said “we are co-operating with the United States and with strategic partners in the region”.

Biden emphasised Israel’s allies’ role in foiling the Iranian assault. “Together with our partners, we defeated that attack,” he said, adding the US was committed to both Israel’s security and “prevent[ing] the conflict from spreading”.

The UK, France and Jordan also assisted Israel in shooting down or disabling the vast majority of the projectiles. 

An Israeli official said the war cabinet had discussed a variety of military and diplomatic responses, adding that Israel reserved the right to respond. In an indication that Israel is considering retaliating sooner rather than later, the official said any response would have more impact if it came “in close proximity” to the Iranian attack.

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told his UK counterpart Lord David Cameron in a phone call after the attack that Tehran did “not welcome regional escalation”, the foreign ministry said.

But it said he also warned that “in case of any new Israeli adventurism, our response will be urgent, more powerful and larger in scale”.

Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said on state television that the timing of Iran’s response to any Israeli retaliatory action “will be measured not in days or hours, but in seconds”. 

French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community should do “everything we can to avoid flare-ups” and “try to convince Israel that we shouldn’t respond by escalating, but rather by isolating Iran”.

The US and UK have both made clear they will not participate in any retaliatory strike. Israel’s Arab neighbours fear conflict spilling over into their borders.

“We’re saying very strongly that we don’t support a retaliatory strike,” Cameron said.

Tehran launched the attack on Saturday night in retaliation for an Israeli strike on its consulate in Damascus this month that killed several senior Iranian commanders.

An Iranian official told the Financial Times that Iran did not want the crisis to escalate and had forewarned the US about its intention to conduct a retaliatory attack against Israel, two days before the missile and drone barrage was launched.

Messages were sent to Washington through the Swiss embassy, which acts as the US representative in Tehran, and later through Turkey, the official said.

“The message said Iran needed to respond . . . but it would be calculated just to show the Israelis that, from now on, there will be a response to their actions, but Iran is not seeking escalation,” the official added.

The US and Iran did pass messages to each other but Tehran did not share the timing or the targets, Kirby said.

“There was never any message to us or to anyone else, on the timeframe, the targets or the type of response,” he added.

International markets were mixed after the news from the Middle East on Monday, with oil prices falling slightly from elevated levels while US stocks slipped on renewed inflation fears.

Iran’s salvo was the first time it had attacked Israel directly from its own territory and brought the Middle East closer to a full-blown war between its two strongest military powers.

The region has been engulfed by hostilities since the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted in October.

On Monday, four Israeli soldiers were injured in a blast after entering Lebanese territory. The Iran-backed Hizbollah militant group said it had planted explosive devices in the Tel Ismail area and detonated them when the soldiers approached.

The IDF said on Sunday it was calling up two brigades of reservists “for operational activities on the Gazan front”.

Israel has pledged to launch an operation in Rafah, which it regards as Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza. But it has been under intense pressure from the US not to carry out an operation in the city without evacuating the more than 1mn Palestinians who are sheltering there.

Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran, Lucy Fisher and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in London, Max Seddon in Riga and Felicia Schwartz in Washington