Explosions rocked the Iranian city on Friday in what sources described as an Israeli attack, but Tehran downplayed the incident and indicated it was not planning retaliation, in a response that appeared aimed at preventing a full-scale regional war.
The limited scale of the attack and Iran’s muted response appeared to signal a successful effort by diplomats working around the clock to avoid war since Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel last Saturday.
Iranian media and officials described a smaller number of explosions, which they said were the result of Iranian air defenses striking three drones over the city of Isfahan. Namely, they called the incident an attack by “infiltrators” and not by Israel, thus removing the need for retaliation.
An Iranian official told Reuters there were no plans to respond to Israel over the incident.
“The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We were not exposed to any external attack, and the emphasis is more towards infiltration than attack,” said the official.
Israel has not said anything about the incident. For days, he claimed he was plotting revenge against Iran for Saturday’s strikes, Iran’s first ever direct attack on Israel in decades of a shadow war waged by groups close to them that has escalated in the Middle East through six months of conflict in Gaza, Fena writes.
