Source: International Business Times
People shop at a bazaar in Iran's central city of Isfahan after a reported Israeli strike in the area AFP After years of high-level US pressure on its ally to show restraint, Israel's purported attack on Iran takes the region and Western-led diplomacy into uncharted territory. Iran and Israel have long waged a shadow war, marked by assassinations of Tehran's nuclear scientists and attacks on Israel by the clerical state's allies in the Arab world such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, but the United States has put a top priority on preventing a wide-scale war. The deadliest-ever assault on Israel, carried out on October 7 by Iranian-backed Palestinian militants Hamas, shook Israel and solidified its resolve, with President Joe Biden's administration resigned to limiting rather than preventing a regional flare-up.
