Israeli leaders will likely decide in the coming days on a military response to Iran’s widespread drone and missile attacks that rocked the country last weekend.

The decision will either reestablish a delicate set of unspoken rules that have governed their regional rivalry for decades, or send the region spiralling towards a wider war that could pull in US forces and its allies.

Israeli military deputy head of the IDF international press department, first lieutenant Masha Michelson, displays to the media one of the intercepted Iranian ballistic missiles .

Iran’s unprecedented Saturday night attack – with hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles – was the first time it had launched direct strikes against Israel from its territory. Tehran insisted its actions were necessary and legal because Israel had broken an understanding by bombing an Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April. Israel has not confirmed or denied it was involved.

The bombing on what is technically Iranian territory was previously thought to be out of bounds, but tensions between the two countries have skyrocketed since Iran’s ally Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people.

Israel responded with a devastating war in Gaza that has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health officials. The United Nations says it has brought the territory to the brink of a “man-made” famine.

Israel has for years launched strikes against Iranian proxies and Iranian positions in neighbouring Syria, although it rarely claims responsibility. Those strikes – which have often hit Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps positions – have mostly gone unanswered by Tehran. That is, until the strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed multiple senior IRGC generals.

Sources in Israel believe that Israeli military intelligence did not realise this attack would ignite such a furious response from Iran – or that it would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Iranian leaders decided following the consulate strike that a strong response was required to deter any further encroachments. Even so, they were quick to signal that they didn’t want to start a war.

“The matter can be deemed concluded,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations posted on social media, shortly after the drone and missile assault had finished.

The Israelis did not agree, however. Benny Gantz, a minister in the war cabinet, vowed to “build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us”, suggesting that a direct attack on Iran was under consideration.

“It’s a very fine balancing act,” Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, told The Independent. “It will need to be a response that restores deterrence, but that doesn’t trigger an all-out regional war.”

“They certainly need to consider Iran’s direct response capabilities, but also the abilities of its various allies in the region – Hezbollah first and foremost among them – to cause real damage in Israel,” he added.

Mr Maksad said both sides were seeking deterrence, but that reestablishing that without risking a wider war would be difficult.

He suggested a reaction “that is not directed at the Iranian homeland” might not provoke another Iranian response, such as a cyber attack instead of widespread bombing.

However, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said during a visit to Israeli troops near the Lebanon border on Wednesday that Israel would not allow a return to normal.

“The Iranians will not be able to establish a new status of deterrence against the State of Israel. IAF aircraft operate everywhere – the skies of the Middle East are ‘open’, and any enemy that fights us will be hit, no matter where they may be,” he said.

The Israeli public is torn over how to handle it. A survey by Hebrew University in Jerusalem this week found that 52 per cent of the country believes Israel should not respond to the Iranian attack, with that rising to three-quarters of those polled if it “undermines Israel’s security alliance with its allies”.

Analysts and politicians in Israel fear that a dangerous precedent has been set if Iran is able to fire 300 drones, and ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel without any military response.

“The Israeli government has to do something, politically they cannot ignore it completely. As this may be the beginning of something more dangerous,” said Amos Harel, non-resident fellow of Brookings and an Israeli military expert and correspondent.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently fighting to hold on to a fractious coalition that includes extreme-right hardliners, many of whom may threaten to collapse the government if Israel does not respond with force.

But there are restraining factors, too. US president Joe Biden has pledged his “ironclad” support for Israel’s defence against Iran, but he has also made it very clear that he will not back any offensive operations in response to the attack.

The US is the primary backer of Israel’s war in Gaza, and Mr Biden has suffered domestically for his support as civilian casualties stretched into the tens of thousands. Opening another front in the conflict would damage him significantly just months before a presidential election.

“I think [Netanyahu] will try to find a middle way and hit Iranian targets without getting entangled in a full-scale war. The question is what that looks like,” Mr Harel told The Independent.

The concern in Israel is that Iran has already threatened to respond to whatever Israel does next. Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, said Wednesday that the “tiniest attack” by Israel would bring a “massive and harsh” reaction in turn.

Iranians are getting tougher in their rhetoric and “there is a change in strategy,” Mr Harel added.

Mr Harel said messaging from Tehran is: do not hit targets in Syria as “the price is too high”.

“Now, they are identifying a point where they are going to force Israel into conceding into new rules of engagement.”

But there is concern that a tit-for-tat between Israel and Iran could get out of hand and drag the region to the brink of all-out war particularly with the escalation of cross-border fire between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

Many believe Mr Netanayhau is also playing for time, which is indicated by contradictory statements from his government on how to respond to Iran. The unprecedented Iranian attack has shifted the world’s spotlight away from the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and accusations that Israel has deliberately restricted aid, targeted civilians and aid workers and created a man-made famine – charges Israel vehemently denies.

It also means less media and political attention on Israel’s promise to launch what would be a devastating ground offensive into Rafah, the last refuge for displaced civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Iranian drone debris rains down on Jordan, stuck in the middle of the Middle East war

Rocket debris and shrapnel landed in Jordan as the military shot Iranian missiles out of the sky on Saturday night 

Unable to fall asleep, Oun Alka’abneh was scrolling on his phone late on Saturday when he heard loud bangs, then a piercing explosion – all of which jolted him upright.

He rushed to peer out the window in Amman, the capital of Jordan, worried that someone had been hit on the street by a car.

What he saw came as a shock. A giant chunk from an Iranian projectile – shot out of the skies by the Jordanian military – had crashed right outside his house. Shrapnel scattered up and down the block.

Iran was launching more than 300 drones and missiles in the direction of Israel that night in an unprecedented, retaliatory attack. Many of those projectiles were soaring right over Jordan, which shares the world’s longest border with Israel and the West Bank, a Palestinian territory.

“I thought a lot of things that night,” said Mr Alka’abneh. “But I just never imagined that a rocket would land in my neighbourhood.”

Police showed up within minutes and cordoned off the area. Eventually, Mr Alka’abneh wandered outside to take a look, collecting some small fragments.

The crash crater was covered with new asphalt on Tuesday morning, and Mr Alka’abneh’s street in Amman’s Marj al-Hamam neighbourhood appeared to resume its usual, quiet hum.

But tension hangs thick in the air across Jordan – a country of more than 11 million people – caught between regional arch-rivals Israel directly to the west, and Iran further afield to the east.

Worries abound over how Israel will choose to respond. On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates called for maximum “self-restraint” in the Middle East to avoid “the dangers of war and its dire consequences,” in a rare joint statement.

Concerns are brewing as well that Jordan’s decision to shoot down Iranian projectiles will be viewed as support for Israel, which could put the country in the crosshairs of Iran.

These actions have confused the West, given Jordan’s longtime support for the Palestinians.

In 1948 in what the latter remembers as the nakba, or “the catastrophe,” when the modern state of Israel was established, many Palestinian refugees decamped for neighbouring Jordan, and today make up about half of the country’s population.

But Jordan has underscored, however, that it would have done the same no matter which nation or entity fired drones and missiles into its sovereign airspace.

Shooting down Iranian projectiles was as much a message to Iran as it was to Israel – that Jordan won’t allow this dispute to play out on its territory.

Jordan will not become “the theatre of a regional war,” Jordanian King Abdullah II stressed to Joe Biden, the US president, in a call this week.

“Jordan took a clear and sharp stance against Israel…calling out the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza,” said Omar al-Ayasrah, a member of Jordan’s parliament.

But “when Iran tried to strike Israel, we prevented its missiles and drones from reaching Israel through our airspace; this is due to the consideration that we reject the notion of being used as a battleground in the conflict”.

In reality, Jordan considers both Iran and Israel its “major enemies in the region” as they have significant influence in all surrounding countries, said Mohamad Hamad al-Katatsheh, the dean of the school of international affairs at the University of Jordan.

Iran has serious sway in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, where it backs various militant groups that have sowed chaos in the Middle East for years – including in the current war between Israel and Hamas, which began last October.

Israel, on the other hand, has control over Jerusalem – another important city in the region.

“We stand by Gaza and the Palestinians,” said Mr al-Katatsheh. “But in this latest dispute of Iran’s flying projectiles, we feel that Iran is trying to drag Jordan into a war that we have no relation to.

“Even if Iran’s aim is to ‘liberate Palestine’ it shouldn’t be through invading Jordan’s sovereign airspace, and at the expense of our country.”

If Iran succeeds in chipping away at Jordan’s sovereignty, and its borders become less secure and more porous, then that “benefits only Israel, the other enemy, which is trying to kick the Palestinians out, and turn Jordan into a replacement for Palestinians”.

Jordan shares the same view as Egypt, whose Sinai peninsula borders southern Gaza – that the Palestinians should be allowed to remain where they are on their land, rather than be displaced into neighbouring nations.

Iranian rocket debris landing in Amman this week underlined Jordan’s unique position geographically and geopolitically, long forcing the government, and its ruling monarchy, to toe the line.

In 1994, Jordan became the second Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel, following in Egypt’s footsteps – a watershed moment that ended decades of war between the two nations.

Over the years, Jordan has also increased a security partnership with Washington – the depths of which were revealed earlier this year when a drone hit an American military outpost in northeast Jordan, called Tower 22, and killed three US soldiers.

But public sentiment in Jordan has soured significantly against Israel and the US, its strongest ally, over the last six months as the war in Gaza rages on.

Protests have swept through the streets of Amman, with demonstrators gathering at the US and Israeli embassies. Crowds have chanted “Death to America,” a surprising development in a country that has had a solid, strategic partnership with Washington for many years.

Questions, too, have swirled over Jordan’s relations with Israel.

But maintaining its peace treaty with Israel allows Jordan to “get humanitarian aid into Gaza, to be able to serve and help them, and to raise the Palestinian cause in the international community,” said Mr al-Ayasrah.

Indeed, Jordan has been key in funnelling humanitarian aid into Gaza – when such deliveries are allowed by Israel – sending supplies via ground visits and air drops.

On Tuesday alone, a food aid convoy of 75 trucks made their way into Gaza with the assistance of the Jordanian military.

“Everybody is angry about what’s happening in Gaza, and wants this to stop. Even I am a little upset about the peace treaty,” said Gassan al-Qawasmi, 38, a lawyer of Palestinian origin.

“But Jordan is a small country with limited resources in a sensitive location; this should be kept in place for us to remain safe,” he said. “The US is the devil’s head, but it is the most powerful country in the world…[and] we need to survive; we cannot skip out of this alliance.”

In essence, Jordan is a buffer state in a region that has long been volatile, and is now perhaps under more threat than ever – particularly as Iran has sought to sow greater influence in the country, as it has done elsewhere in the Middle East.

“This is what we have seen in Syria, what we saw in Iraq before,” said Barakat al-Zyoud, a Jordanian journalist. “In all these countries, when order failed…radical armed groups proliferated, and caused even further chaos, refugees and bloodshed.”

Across Amman, sentiments are mixed. Some, like Mr Alka’abneh, feel safe knowing the Jordanian air force is strong enough to shoot down hostile Iranian missiles.

Others, like Nazik Tarawneh, 68, who also lives on a street where debris fell, remains distressed over what happens next.

“The war needs to stop in Gaza; then there will be hope, peace, and safety,” said Ms Tarawneh. “The whole region is under threat because of that [war].”

“In Jordan, we are not used to this – this is the first time we have felt directly threatened…I was so afraid,” she said. “I hope Israel will not do the same – use Jordanian airspace – when they retaliate.”