West Asia crisis: Israeli war cabinet fails to decide on how to respond to Iranian attack

The Israeli war cabinet failed to reach a consensus on Sunday (Apr 14) about how Israel should respond to Iran's unprecedented weekend attack. According to a report by The Times of Israel, Israeli officials said that the war cabinet favoured a retaliation against Iran, but was divided over the timing and the scale of any such response. The cabinet held deliberations for over three hours, the report added. 

On Saturday (Apr 13), Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles in a retaliatory strike after a suspected Israeli attack on its embassy compound in Syria weeks back. Most of the drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel.

Citing multiple Hebrew media reports, The Times of Israel report said that war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz and cabinet observer Gadi Eisenkot had proposed striking back at Iran while the Iranian attack was still underway.

However, according to a report by Channel 12 News, this proposal was opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and others. The Prime Minister's Office, meanwhile, denied the claims made by the report. 

On Sunday, war cabinet minister Gantz said that Israel would exact a price from Iran in response to its weekend attack when the time was right. 

"In the face of the Iranian threat, we will build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us. And most importantly, faced with the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will continue to unite and become stronger," Gantz said.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that Tehran gave neighbouring countries and Israel's ally the United States (US) a 72-hour notice it would attack Israel. However, US officials said that Washington was not informed about the strikes. 

"That is absolutely not true. They did not give a notification, nor did they give any sense of ... 'these will be the targets, so evacuate them," a US official told the news agency Reuters.