Iran-Israel: Timeline of confrontation and what could happen next

Iran has launched its first ever direct attack on Israeli soil, leaving the world waiting to see how Tel Aviv will respond amid fears of a wider conflict developing in the Middle East.

In a sharp escalation of the tensions roiling in the region since Israel’s war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’s attack on 7 October, Tehran launched a barrage of more than 330 killer drones, ballistic and cruise missiles towards Israel on Saturday night.

Britain and the US were among several of Israel’s allies who helped to shoot down the missiles, and Israeli authorities insisted that 99 per cent of them were shot down without causing any significant damage.

But with members of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet vowing to “exact a price” from Iran, which has said it considers the matter “concluded”, Tel Aviv’s response looks set to determine whether the confrontation with its longstanding foe continues to escalate.

Follow our live blog on the attack here

Israel and Iran have been engaged in shadow warfare for decades, with a long history of clandestine attacks by land, sea, air and cyberspace, which Tehran conducts via its various proxies and allies in the region.

The two nations had formerly been allies until Iran’s pro-Western leader Mohammed Reza Shah was swept from power in the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which installed a new theocratic regime whose opposition to Israel was an ideological imperative.

Over the following years, with Israel invading Lebanon in 1982, Iran’s new regime would work with fellow Shi’ite Muslims there to establish Hezbollah, the group Israel would eventually come to regard as the most dangerous adversary on its borders.

Over the intervening decades, Israel has been unable to suppress Hezbollah – even