Jerusalem — It’s Iran’s move now.

How the Islamic Republic chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli airstrike on its homeland could determine whether the region moves toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.

In the cold, calculated realm of Middle Eastern geopolitics, a strike like the one Israel delivered before dawn Saturday would usually have been met with a strong response.

Military retaliation would allow Iran’s clerical leadership to show strength not only to its own citizens, but also to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militant groups fighting Israel that are the vanguard of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance.

It is too early to say whether Iran’s leadership will follow this path.

Tehran may opt for the time being to refrain from retaliating directly with force, not least because that could expose its weaknesses and invite a stronger Israeli response, analysts say.

“Iran will minimize the impact of the strikes, which are actually quite serious,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London.

She said Iran was “locked in” by military and economic constraints and the uncertainty caused by the US election and its impact on US policy in the region.

Even as wars in the Middle East rage, Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has signaled to his nation that he wants a new nuclear deal with the US to ease crushing international sanctions.

A carefully worded statement from Iran’s military, issued late Saturday, appeared to offer some measure for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. He suggested that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top decision-maker, was also measured in his first comments on Sunday’s strike. He said the attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed” and did not call for an immediate military response.

Saturday’s strikes targeted Iran’s air defense missile batteries and missile production facilities, according to the Israeli military.

With that, Israel has exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and can still step up its attacks, analysts say.

Satellite photos reviewed by The Associated Press show Israel’s raid damaged facilities at the Parchin military base, southeast of Tehran, which experts have previously linked to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and another base linked to its nuclear program. ballistic missiles.

Current nuclear facilities were not hit, however. Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed this on X, saying that “Iran’s nuclear facilities were not affected.”

Israel has aggressively brought the fight to Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, killing its leader and targeting operatives in an audacious, explosive attack.

“Any Iranian attempt to retaliate will have to contend with the fact that Hezbollah, its most important ally against Israel, has been significantly degraded and its conventional weapons systems largely knocked out twice,” said Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director at International International. Crisis Group, which expects Iran to hold its fire for now.

This is true even if Israel has stopped, as appears to be the case. Some prominent figures in Israel, such as opposition leader Yair Lapid, are already saying the attacks did not go far enough.

Regional experts have suggested that Israel’s relatively limited target list has been intentionally calibrated to make it easier for Iran to back away from escalation.

As Yoel Guzansky, who previously worked for Israel’s National Security Council and is now a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, put it: Israel’s decision to focus on purely military targets “allows them to save face” .

Israel’s targeting options may also be a reflection at least in part of its capabilities. They are unlikely to be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own and would need help from the United States, Guzansky said.

Additionally, Israel still has leverage to go after higher-value targets should Iran retaliate—especially now that nodes in its air defenses have been destroyed.

“You keep all kinds of contingency plans,” Guzansky said.

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa professor focused on Iran and the Middle East, wrote on X that the fact that Iranian media initially downplayed the strikes suggests that Tehran may want to avoid further escalation. However, they face a dilemma.

“If he fights back, he risks an escalation where his weakness means he loses more,” he wrote. “If they don’t fight back, they project a signal of weakness.”

Vakil agreed that Iran’s response could be suppressed and that the strikes were designed to minimize the potential for escalation.

“Israel has once again shown its military precision and its capabilities are far superior to Iran’s,” she said.

One thing is certain: the Middle East is in uncharted territory.

For decades, Middle East leaders and strategists have speculated whether and how Israel might one day strike Iran openly, just as they have wondered what direct attacks by Iran, rather than its proxy militant groups, would look like.

Today, it is a reality. However, the playbook on both sides is unclear and may still be in the works.

“There seems to be a major mismatch in both the sword each side wields and the shield they can deploy,” Vaez said.

“While both sides have calibrated and calculated how fast they’re going up the escalation ladder, they’re now in a whole new territory where the new red lines are hazy and the old ones have turned pink,” he said.