On Saturday evening, Iran targeted Israel with hundreds of suicide drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. The vast majority of these projectiles, according to IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari, were intercepted outside of Israel’s borders by Israeli jets and missile defense systems. “A few impacts” were identified inside Israel, including at a military base in the south, causing “slight damage to infrastructure.” One injury has been reported so far—a young Bedouin girl who was hurt in the Negev. The most recent update from Israel’s Home Front Command, sent just before 4 a.m. in Israel, said that Israelis no longer need to remain near bomb shelters, which suggests that the current wave of attacks may be over. 

We are now waiting to see how Israel responds. Although an unnamed “senior Israeli official” has been quoted promising a “significant response” to the attacks, Iran appears to have pre-cleared the attacks with the United States via the Oman diplomatic backchannel. And according to Roi Kais of Israel’s Kan News, a U.S. official told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya on Friday, “the United States will take part in the response to the Iranian response if Tehran escalates the situation inappropriately”—which means that the United States tacitly approved an appropriate level of Iranian escalation, such as, we don’t know, a “symbolic” drone-and-missile attack. 

The United States has also, as Barack Ravid reported Friday, demanded to “have a say before decisions are made about any retaliation by Israel.” Pair that with the series of comments on Saturday from top U.S. officials reiterating their ironclad commitment to Israel’s defense against Iran, and you get a sense of what’s really going on here. The United States will help “defend” Israel against Iran, but it will also attempt to constrain Israel from “escalating” by retaliating too aggressively against a “harmless,” “appropriate” Iranian attack.