Israel-Iran latest: Israel will make final decisions based on national interest – Netanyahu

Israel has not officially said how it intends to respond to Iran’s October missile attack – the second in six months – but Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said last week its reaction would be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”.

“They will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results,” Gallant said.

Iran has, in turn, said it will not let any attack by Israel go unanswered.

Meanwhile, the US has said it will help bolster Israel’s air defences, by deploying a high-altitude anti-missile system.

The Pentagon said that the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) deployment underscored the US’s “ironclad” commitment “to the defence of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran”.

Iran said its October missile barrage was a response to Israel’s assassinations of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer in Beirut, and of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in recent weeks, carrying out deadly air strikes predominantly in southern and eastern Lebanon, and also in the capital, Beirut.

Before that, Israel and Hezbollah had been trading cross-border fire on a near daily basis since last October, when Hezbollah began firing into Israel which it said was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.

It had said it would stop firing if there was a ceasefire in Gaza.