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Israel’s Iran Attack Carefully Calibrated After Internal Splits, US Pressure
Iranians attend an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Israel‘s apparent strike on Iran was small and appeared calibrated to dial back risks of a major war, even if the sheer fact it happened at all shattered a taboo of direct attacks that Tehran broke days earlier.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet had initially approved plans for a strike on Monday night inside Iranian territory to respond forcefully to last Saturday’s missile and drone salvo from Iran, but held back at the last-minute, three sources with knowledge of the situation said.
By then, the sources said, the three voting members of the war cabinet had already ruled out the most drastic response — a strike on strategic sites including Iran’s nuclear facilities whose destruction would almost certainly provoke a wider regional conflict.
Facing cabinet divisions and strong warnings from partners including the United States and in the Gulf not to escalate, and aware of the need to keep international opinion on Israel‘s side, the plans to hit back were then postponed twice, the sources said. Two war cabinet meetings were also delayed twice, government officials said.
Netanyahu’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Before the attack, a spokesperson for the government’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate cited Netanyahu as saying Israel would defend itself in whatever way it judged appropriate.
Reuters spoke to a dozen sources in Israel, Iran, and in the Gulf region, as well as the United States, who described six frantic days of efforts in the Gulf, the US, and among some of Israel‘s war planners to limit the response to Iran’s first ever direct attack on its arch rival after decades of shadow war.
Most of the sources asked not to be named to speak about sensitive matters.
The eventual strike on Friday appeared to target an Iranian Air Force base near the city of Isfahan, deep inside the country and close enough to nuclear facilities to send a message of Israel‘s reach but without using airplanes, ballistic missiles, striking any strategic sites, or causing major damage.
Iran said its defense systems shot down three drones over a base near Isfahan early on Friday. Israel said nothing about the incident. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had not been involved in any offensive operations.
An Iranian official told Reuters there were signs the drones were launched from within Iran by “infiltrators,” which could obviate the need for retaliation.
A source familiar with Western intelligence assessments of the incident also said initial evidence suggested Israel launched drones from inside Iranian territory. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
“Israel tried to calibrate between the need to respond and a desire not to enter into a cycle of action and counter reaction that would just escalate endlessly,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington.
He described the situation as a dance, with both parties signaling to each other their intentions and next steps.
“There is huge relief across the Gulf region. It looks like the attack was limited and proportionate and caused limited damage. I see it as a de-escalation,” veteran Saudi analyst Abdelrahman al-Rashed told Reuters.
BIDEN CALL
The decision to hold back from broader and immediate action this week underlined the competing pressures on Netanyahu’s government in the aftermath of the more than 300 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles fired by Iran on Saturday night.
As Iran’s barrage unfolded, two members of the war cabinet, Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both former armed forces commanders, wanted to respond straight away before agreeing to hold off following a call with US President Joe Biden and in the face of differing views from other ministers, two Israeli officials with knowledge of the situation said.
A spokesman for Gantz, a centrist who joined Netanyahu’s emergency government following the Hamas-led attack on Israel last October, did not respond to a request for comment.
The US State Department declined to comment on questions about Israel‘s decision-making. Washington was working to de-escalate tensions, Blinken said on Friday. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Aryeh Deri, the head of one of the ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, who has observer status in the war cabinet and who has generally been wary of drastic moves, was firmly opposed to an immediate strike against Iran, which he believed could endanger the people of Israel given the risk of escalation, a spokesperson for his party said.
“We should also be listening to our partners, to our friends in the world. I say this clearly: I see no shame or weakness in doing so,” Deri told the Haderech newspaper.
Israel‘s options ranged from strikes on strategic Iranian facilities, including nuclear sites or Revolutionary Guards bases, to covert operations, targeted assassinations, and cyber attacks on strategic industrial plants and nuclear facilities, analysts and former officials in Israel have said.
Gulf countries had been increasingly worried the situation would spill into “a grave regional conflagration which might be beyond anyone’s control or ability to contain,” said Abdelaziz al-Sagher, head of the Saudi-based Gulf Research Center.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had publicly called for maximum “self-restraint” to spare the region from a wider war.
Sagher said Gulf countries had warned the United States of the risk of escalation, arguing Israel should conduct only a limited attack without casualties or significant damage that could provoke a major reprisal.
This messaging “was relayed forcefully” in the last few days by the Jordanians, Saudis, and Qataris through direct security and diplomatic channels, one senior regional intelligence source said.
By Thursday, four diplomatic and government sources in the region were expressing confidence that the response would be limited and proportionate.
Ahead of the overnight Israeli strike, one regional source, who had been briefed on Israel‘s thinking, said the response would aim to minimize or completely avoid casualties and was likely to target a military base.
Flying F-35 fighter jets from Israel to Iran, or launching missiles from Israel, would almost certainly violate the airspace of neighboring countries, angering Arab states who Netanyahu has long sought to cultivate as strategic allies, said a Gulf government source with knowledge of the issues.
He couldn’t “just fly F-35 fighter jets across the region and bomb Iran or its nuclear sites,” the source said.
Iranian officials had warned a major Israeli attack would trigger immediate retaliation.
Iran’s options to respond included shutting down the Strait of Hormuz through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes, urging proxies to hit Israeli or US interests, and deploying previously unused missiles, a senior Iranian official said.
While satisfying Israel‘s moderates at home, its neighbors and international partners, the measured strike, when it came, was met with dismay from hardliners in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose ultranationalist party is a key prop in Netanyahu’s coalition, posted a single word on X: “Feeble.”
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Netanyahu Says New Gaza Offensive Will Be Intensive After Israel Approves Expanded Operation Against Hamas
Israeli tanks are positioned near the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that a new offensive in Gaza will be an intensive military operation aimed at defeating Hamas, but stopped short of detailing just how much of the enclave’s territory would be seized.
“Population will be moved, for its own protection,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on X. He said Israeli soldiers won’t go into Gaza, launch raids, and then retreat. “The intention is the opposite of that,” he said.
Netanyahu’s social media post came after his security cabinet on Monday approved an expanded offensive against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in which Israel may seize the Gaza Strip and control aid.
An Israeli defense official said it would not be launched before US President Donald Trump concludes his visit next week to the Middle East.
The decision, after weeks of faltering efforts to agree a ceasefire with Hamas, underlines the prospect that the war could continue with no end in sight.
A government spokesman told journalists online that reserve soldiers were being called up to expand operations in Gaza, not to occupy it.
A report by Israel‘s public broadcaster Kan, citing officials with knowledge of the details, said the new plan was gradual and would take months, with forces focusing first on one area of the battered enclave.
Israeli troops have already taken over an area amounting to around a third of the Gaza Strip, displacing the population and building watchtowers and surveillance posts on cleared ground the military has described as security zones, but the new plan would go further.
One Israeli government official said the newly approved offensive would seize the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, move its civilian population southward, and keep humanitarian aid from falling into Hamas hands.
The defense official said aid distribution, which has been handled by international aid groups and UN organizations, would be transferred to private companies and handed out in the southern area of Rafah once the offensive begins.
The Israeli military, which throughout the war has shown little appetite for occupying Gaza, declined to comment on the remarks by government officials and politicians.
Israel resumed its offensive in March after the collapse of a US-backed ceasefire that had halted fighting for two months. It has since imposed a blockade of aid into the enclave.
The Israeli defense official said that Israel would hold on to security zones seized along the Gaza perimeter because they were vital for protecting Israeli communities around the enclave.
But he said there was a “window of opportunity” for a ceasefire and hostage release deal during a visit by Trump to the region next week.
“If there is no hostage deal, Operation “Gideon Chariots” will begin with great intensity and will not stop until all its goals are achieved,” he said.
Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi rejected what he called “pressure and blackmail.”
“No deal except a comprehensive one, which includes a complete ceasefire, full withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and the release of all prisoners from both sides,” he said.
Israel has yet to present a clear vision for post-war Gaza after a campaign that has displaced most of the enclave’s population and left it depending on aid supplies that have been dwindling since the blockade.
Experts and Israeli officials have long said that Hamas steals much of the aid to fuel its terrorist operations and sells some of the remainder to Gaza’s civilian population at an increased price. Ministers have also said that aid distribution cannot be left to international organizations, which it accuses of allowing Hamas to seize supplies intended for the civilian population.
Instead, officials have looked at plans for private contractors to handle distribution, through what the United Nations has described as Israeli hubs.
On Monday, Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said on X that Israel was demanding that the UN and non-governmental organizations shut down their aid distribution system in Gaza.
However, the decision to expand the operation was immediately hailed by Israeli government hardliners who have long pressed for a full takeover of the Gaza Strip by Israel and a permanent displacement of the population, along the line of the “Riviera” plans outlined by Trump in February.
“We are finally going to conquer Gaza. We are no longer afraid of the word ‘occupation’,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a pro-settler conference in an online discussion.
However, with Israel facing threats from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who on Sunday fired a missile that hit close to Ben Gurion Airport, an unstable Syria next door, and a volatile situation in the West Bank, the capacity for prolonged military operations faces constraints.
Israel‘s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said on Sunday that the military has already begun issuing tens of thousands of call-up orders for its reserve forces, looking to expand the Gaza campaign.
Zamir, who took office in March, has pushed back against calls by government hardliners who want to choke off aid entirely and has told ministers aid must be let in soon, according to Kan.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 taken hostage into Gaza in the deadliest day for Israel in its history.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hama’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
Up to 24 of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza are believed to be alive. Families fear that the fighting will endanger their loved ones while critics say Israel risks being drawn into a long guerrilla war with limited gains and no clear strategy.
Successive surveys have shown dwindling public support for the war among Israelis, many of whom prefer to see a ceasefire deal reached and more hostages released.
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Duke University Press Is an Anti-Israel Defamation Machine
Clocktower Quad at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: Warren LeMay/Wikimedia Commons.
Duke University Press has recently published two journal articles that could be construed as calling for the destruction of Israel.
In 2024, the Critical Times journal, a Duke publication, printed Layal Ftouni’s article that concluded, “For a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
In April of 2025, the South Atlantic Quarterly, another Duke publication, carried an anonymous article that similarly concluded, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) explains:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is an antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations.
This rallying cry has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which seek Israel’s destruction through violent means. It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.
A doctor at the Duke School of Medicine, alarmed by these publications, told me these Duke Press articles are a form of academic support for terrorism.
In addition to calling for the destruction of Israel, the 2025 article is attributed to anonymous authors. Duke Press has essentially concealed this “scholarship” so the public can’t see who is calling for the destruction of Israel. Would Duke Press ever publish an anonymous article — or any article — calling for the violent destruction of the Palestinian-controlled territories? I highly doubt it.
The Ftouni article states: “I would like to thank the editorial team, Samera Esmeir, Susana Draper, and Ramsey McGlazer.”
All three editors are anti-Israel activists. Esmeir signed a letter “calling on scholars and librarians within Middle East studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions.” Draper and McGlazer signed a letter titled “Academics Boycott Columbia University,” stating, “We endorse and reiterate the demands of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment: divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
Judith Butler is a member of the Critical Times Executive Editorial Board. Butler outraged many when, according to The JC, she publicly described the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led pogrom — in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and many others were taken hostage and sexually assaulted — as “an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack.”
In a 2023 Duke Press book, The Cunning of Gender Violence, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes:
Israeli ideology treats the colonized Palestinians as a demographic threat to be eliminated. Andrea Smith (2003) writes in her work on the sexual colonization of native peoples that the native Other is rendered “sexually violable and ‘rapeable’” within the framework of colonialism. The treatment of schoolgirls within the Israeli biopolitical colonial regime similarly can be read as constructing them not just as disposable but also penetrable ‘Others,’ especially through the use of guns.
She adds, Israelis “carry their rifles as an extension of phallic power.”
The language clearly portrays Israelis as sexual predators or sexual monsters. Given the longstanding perceived connection between Jewish people worldwide and Israel, this is even more problematic.
The book is part of a Duke Press series. The series editors are Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman.
Grewal and Kaplan both pledged in 2021 to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel “in the classroom and on campus.”
All three editors signed a “Scholars Against the War on Palestine” 2023 letter calling for a “permanent ceasefire now,” stating, “We stand with Palestinians everywhere.” The letter relentlessly attacked Israel and did not mention — a single time — Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, or the hundreds of hostages being held at the time by Hamas-led terrorists. Some of these hostages remain today in Gaza in horrendous conditions. The words “Hamas” and “hostages” did not even appear one time in the letter.
Such severe anti-Israel bias helps explain how Duke University Press apparently found no problem with a journal article stating that Israelis view Palestinians as rapeable.
In 2024, the Transgender Studies Quarterly journal, a Duke Press publication, published an article in which the authors explain, “the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [are] referred to by resistance movements as the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).” The authors then immediately used the term “IOF” twice in the column. For example, the authors discuss what they call “an IOF missile ostensibly on its way to destroy lives in Gaza.”
This article makes it clear that Duke University Press is being used as part of the “resistance movement” against Israel.
Duke University Press has a long history of publishing antisemitic works. For example, “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” by Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar, published in 2017, updated blood libels against the Jewish people. She states Israel specifically targets Palestinian children to maim them and then profit from their incurred disabilities. Like other Duke University Press authors, she compares Israelis to Nazis.
In 2018, I reported that seven members of the Duke University Press Editorial Advisory Board signed initiatives related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Duke University Press website explains that during the peer review process, the publisher “performs an intellectual gatekeeping function, ensuring that only scholarship of the highest quality receives the imprimatur of Duke University.”
The Duke University Press peer review process is apparently a colossal failure that puts hateful, antisemitic content into the world, year after year after year.
Duke University Press is functioning at times more as an advocacy organization for promoting anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian positions than as a scholarly publisher. Perhaps Duke Press should change its name to “The Palestinian Point of View Publishing House.”
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
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A Message for Trump: Palestinian Authority Hates US, But Loves China
Mahmoud al-Aloul, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of Palestinian organization and political party Fatah, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Mussa Abu Marzuk, senior member of the Palestinian terror movement Hamas, attend an event at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on July 23, 2024. Photo: Pedro Pardo/Pool via REUTERS
If you are worried, there is good news. China is here to save humanity — at least, according to a senior Palestinian leader.
“A world war” is looming caused by “the Zionist-American alliance,” and it is China that will be saving humanity, explains Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, who is also Fatah’s General Commissioner for Arab and China Relations:
Posted text: “Fatah Central Committee member and [Fatah] General Commissioner for Arab and China Relations Abbas Zaki received His Honor Ambassador of China in the State of Palestine Zeng Jixin today, [April 20, 2025,] in his office in Ramallah…
Zaki noted that China, with its positive initiatives, is qualified to save humanity on this planet from a looming world war, considering the ongoing aggression that is being waged by the Zionist-American alliance.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, April 20, 2025]
Meeting the Chinese Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority last year, Zaki stressed that China’s position of “standing against injustice and tyranny” and “believing in justice” makes it an obvious candidate to help “Palestine” and the Arab world against “the Israeli war”:
Posted text: “Fatah Central Committee member and [Fatah] General Commissioner for Arab and China Relations Abbas Zaki received Chinese Ambassador in the State of Palestine Zeng Jixin …
Zaki said that the Middle East region is in real danger as a result of the expansion of the Israeli war against the region’s states, including Iran, which heralds a wide regional war that will lead to an expansion of the war in the world.
This requires intervention by states that believe in peace, shared victory, and mutual benefit between the peoples of the world, stand against injustice and tyranny, and believe in justice, like China.” [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, Oct. 10, 2024]
In turn, the Chinese ambassador repeated the PA’s false narrative, which bashes “the US and the Western colonialist forces” who support Israel, while China is all about “peace … [for all] peoples on the face of the earth.”:
Zeng Jixin [stated that] the US is pretending to stand alongside democracy and human rights, while it and the Western colonialist forces are supporting the Israeli occupation with all types of weapons and are waging false propaganda campaigns against China.
He added that the Chinese culture and its values always call for peace, security, and stability for the world’s states and their peoples on the face of the earth. [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, Facebook page, Oct. 10, 2024]
Former PA PM Muhammad Shtayyeh expressed a similar wish at the Chinese-Arab Forum for Young Politicians:
Shtayyeh emphasized that China needs to continue to strengthen its strategic ties with the Arab states and move on to a stage in which it will take action to reshape the international system. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 28, 2024]
When Shtayyeh received Ambassador Jixin, he repeated the message of China’s dominant role:
China is making steady progress to take its role in the international arena through its initiatives, especially those related to Palestine … [and] emphasized that China needs to continue to strengthen its strategic ties with the Arab states and move on to a stage in which it will take action to reshape the international system.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 28, 2024]
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that the PA demands a “new world order” ruled by the “Islamic world, Russia and China” in order to “realize justice.”
While the PA rejects the US and the West, it embraces Russia and China, believing they can “build a new world free of chaos and terror.”
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has explicitly called on Russia and China to assist the Islamic and Arab world against the US’ “imperialist hegemony over the world”:
Al-Habbash said … Russia is a world power, and in order to maintain balance in the international arena, the world must get rid of the unipolar system through the existence of a number of poles in the international system that will achieve balance between the world powers, otherwise the world will turn into a prisoner of just one world power [America].
The US is attempting to maintain this imperialist hegemony over the world by presenting itself as the world’s only pole, but Russia can achieve this balance together with the Islamic and Arab world and also with China.
[Website of Sputnik Arabic, Russian state-owned news agency, June 12, 2024]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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