Israel warns Iran it will ‘exact a price’ for attack as key ally US scrambles to prevent regional war

Israel has warned it will “exact a price” for Iran’s mass drone and missile attack at the weekend which tipped the Middle East one step closer to a major conflict.

Iran launched a wave of 330 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles overnight on Saturday in retaliation for an alleged Israeli airstrike on its consulate in Damascus that killed two generals from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Almost all of the Iranian drones and missiles were shot down by Israel and its allies – including the UK, the US, and the air forces of other countries – raising the spectre of a conflict spreading across the region and beyond.

But in an attempt to lower tensions, US president Joe Biden warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the US would not join a further counteroffensive, while senior White House officials said they “don’t seek a wider war in the region” or one with Iran.

Ahead of a meeting of the Israeli war cabinet on Sunday, minister Benny Gantz, the former head of the military, vowed that the “campaign is not over” and added that Iran would build a regional coalition to counter the threat from Iran “when the time is right”.

“Iran is a global problem, it is a regional challenge and it is also a danger to Israel, and yesterday, the world clearly stood together with Israel in the face of the danger,” he said.

“Faced with the threat of Iran we will build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the way and at the time that suits us”.

His words were echoed by Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant who also spoke of establishing a “strategic alliance against this grave threat by Iran”.

Israeli president Isaac Herzog called Tehran “an empire of evil which has its proxies, led all over the region and [with] all cells