Here are the latest developments.

The Israeli military declined to comment. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The explosions came less than a week after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel — nearly all of which were shot down — in response to an April 1 strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria that killed seven Iranian officials. That attack brought the decades-long shadow war between Israel and Iran — waged on land, at sea, in air and in cyberspace — more clearly into the open.

Here’s what else to know:

• Israeli leaders came close to ordering widespread strikes in Iran on the night Iran attacked, officials said, but after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with President Biden, and because the damage was limited, the war cabinet postponed a decision. Mr. Biden and other world leaders urged Israel for days not to retaliate in a way that would inflame a wider Middle East war while it fights on two other fronts, against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both allies of Iran.

• The Iranian officials said that the attack on Friday was carried out by small drones, possibly launched from inside Iran. They said that a separate group of small drones was shot down in the Tabriz region, roughly 500 miles north of Isfahan. Iranian news agencies reported that nuclear facilities in Isfahan had not been hit.

• President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran had warned that “the tiniest act of aggression” on his country’s soil would draw a response. But in the hours after Israel’s strike, there have been no public calls for retribution by Iranian officials.

• The United States and Britain on Thursday imposed new sanctions on Iranian military leaders and weapons manufacturers, a coordinated action that they said would further isolate Iran. White House officials said the U.S. sanctions were aimed at disrupting Iran’s ability to produce the drones it had used to attack Israel and blocking exports from its lucrative steel industry.

 April 19, 2024, Matt Surman

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there had been “no damage” to nuclear sites in Iran but that it was closely monitoring the situation. In a social media post, the agency said its chief, Rafael M. Grossi, called for “extreme restraint from everybody.”

 April 19, 2024 Cassandra Vinograd Reporting from Jerusalem

President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran had warned that “the tiniest act of aggression” on his country’s soil would draw a response. But in the hours after Israel’s strike, there have been no public calls for retribution by Iranian officials.

April 19, 2024, Stanley Reed

Ripples in the oil market after Israel’s strike were short-lived. Futures for Brent crude, the international benchmark, passed $90 a barrel but quickly fell back to about $87 a barrel as news reports indicated that the damage caused to Iran was minor and its reaction was muted. Investors do not seem to want to bid up prices unless there is a clear danger to supplies.

Isfahan is one of Iran’s most historic cities and home to military facilities.

That has made the city, home to roughly two million people today, one of the tourist centers of Iran.

Isfahan is also a center of missile production, research and development for Iran. That includes the assembly of Shahab medium-range missiles, which can reach Israel and beyond. And it is the site of four small nuclear research facilities, all supplied by China many years ago.

The Natanz uranium enrichment site is also in Isfahan Province, along with an air base that has long hosted Iran’s fleet of American-made F-14 Tomcats — purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to The Associated Press. A Russian-made S-300 air defense battery has also been seen in Isfahan, according to an assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

A photo released by the Iranian Army purportedly showing missiles fired during a drill in Isfahan in October. Credit...Iranian Army, via EPA, via Shutterstock

The Israeli attack early on Friday — which Iranian news agencies said had not hit Isfahan’s nuclear facilities — was not the first time the area has been targeted.

In January 2023, Israel carried out a drone attack on a military facility in the middle of Isfahan, according to senior intelligence officials who were familiar with the dialogue between Israel and the United States about the strike. The facility’s purpose was not clear, and neither was how much damage that attack caused.

At the time, Iran made no effort to hide the fact that an attack had happened but said it had done little damage. Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported that the drones had targeted an ammunition manufacturing plant and that they had been shot down by a surface-to-air defense system.

 April 19, 2024 Nader Ibrahim

Israeli missiles targeted air defense positions in southern Syria, according to SANA, the Syrian news agency, quoting a military source. The agency said the attack happened at 2:55 a.m. local time on Friday and caused some damage, without giving details. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

A muted initial response in Iran and Israel suggest both want to avoid escalation.

In Israel, officials described the strike as a limited response designed to avoid escalating tensions. Pundits on the country’s morning news shows said the strike did not appear to cause significant damage to military sites in Iran.

“Israel can do elegant military maneuvers that are not noisy or cause significant military damage but which deliver the message Israel wants,” Dana Weiss, a diplomatic affairs analyst for Israel’s Channel 12, told viewers. “And that is what we have seen them do.”

State television in Iran said military and nuclear facilities in Isfahan were safe and broadcast footage of the city looking calm in the spring light. One newsreader there described the attack as “not a big deal.”

Social media users in Iran, including some connected to the country’s military, mocked the Israeli strike as a puny response to the roughly 300 missiles and drones that Iran launched at Israel last weekend.

In one video that was widely shared online Friday, a girl throws a paper airplane at an apartment building and compares it to the Israeli strike, giggling as the folded paper hits the concrete structure.

Iranian officials told The New York Times that a strike had hit a military air base near Isfahan. But Brig. General Siavash Mihandoust, the most senior military official in Isfahan, told state television that any explosions heard there on Friday were not caused by Israeli strikes, attributing them to air defense systems shooting down “flying objects.”

Some in Israel celebrated the strikes, including elected leaders from the country’s right-wing parties.

Tally Gotliv, a lawmaker from the Likud party, wrote on X, “A morning in which our head is proudly up. Israel is a strong and forceful country.” 

A strike appears to be Israel’s first military response to Iran’s attack.

Flight tracking websites showed that civilian planes had diverted their routes away from the area.

The Israeli military declined to comment. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The explosions came less than a week after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel, its first direct attack on the country, in response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria that killed seven Iranian officials on April 1.

For days, Israeli leaders have threatened to respond to Iran’s strikes, which turned the two countries’ yearslong shadow war into a direct confrontation.

The Israeli military declined to comment about the explosions on Friday in Iran.

Iran’s army chief, Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, said on Wednesday that Iran would respond to any Israeli aggression, according to remarks carried by the IRNA state news agency.

President Biden had advised Israel against responding, amid fears that an Israeli counterattack would escalate into an all-out war. For more than six months, Israel has been fighting on two other fronts — against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are allies of Iran. 

U.S. officials express ‘concerns’ to Israeli officials about any major assault on Rafah.

The meeting was convened just days after the United States came to Israel’s defense against a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones fired by Iran; Israeli, U.S. and other allied forces knocked down nearly all of the incoming Iranian weapons, resulting in little damage and no fatalities.

Despite that close collaboration, though, the discussion on Thursday underscored that the two sides remained at odds over Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza more than six months after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

“U.S. participants expressed concerns with various courses of action in Rafah, and Israeli participants agreed to take these concerns into account and to have further follow up discussions between experts,” the White House statement said. The statement did not elaborate on the specific concerns.

The Israeli side was led by Ron Dermer, a close adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and member of the Israeli war cabinet, and Tzachi Hanegbi, the prime minister’s national security adviser. The group discussed the Iran attack and efforts to defend Israel against future threats.

The White House statement emphasized that the United States shared Israel’s goal “to see Hamas defeated in Rafah,” but the president has resisted a ground operation out of fear of the consequences for more than 1 million Palestinians who have taken refuge there.

The C.I.A. director blames Hamas for stalled peace talks.

While Mr. Burns did not describe the details of that proposal, he said that so far Hamas has not accepted it.

“It was a deep disappointment to get a negative reaction from Hamas,” said Mr. Burns, speaking at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. “Right now, it’s that negative reaction that really is standing in the way of innocent civilians in Gaza getting humanitarian relief that they so desperately need.”

Last Sunday, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, expressed regret that Hamas had rejected the proposal and argued it proved that the group was not interested in reaching a deal.

Other American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, have said Hamas has signaled that it does not have enough women and civilian hostages in its control to consummate the first part of the deal, which would release 40 hostages over six weeks in return for a large number of Palestinian prisoners.

A senior Hamas official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were not enough living civilian hostages left who met Israel’s criteria to reach their proposed figure of 40 hostages over six weeks. He accused Israel of seeking to free captive soldiers for a lower price than that demanded by the group. Hamas has said most soldiers would be released in a later phase of a cease-fire deal.

In its latest proposal to negotiators, Hamas called for releasing fewer than 20 living hostages as part of an initial, six-week phase cease-fire deal, according to two Israeli officials familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Israel had hoped to see wounded and ill hostages freed, but Hamas was insisting on a far more narrow definition limited to the elderly and women, one of the officials said.

Last year, Mr. Burns helped guide talks that led to the release of roughly 100 hostages in return for a temporary halt in fighting and the release of Palestinian prisoners. Mr. Burns said he could not guarantee that the current talks would succeed.

“And it breaks your heart because you can see in very human terms what’s at stake here as well,” he said.

Mr. Burns also reiterated the Biden administration’s desire that Israel not escalate its conflict with Iran, after what he called a failed Iranian attack last weekend. Instead, he said President Biden and other policymakers hope that “we’ll all find a way to de-escalate the situation.”

“I know the Israeli government, as we sit here this afternoon, is considering a response to what happened last Saturday night,” Mr. Burns said. “And you know, that’s their choice to make that response.”

But Mr. Burns said the Israelis had “clearly demonstrated their superiority” with shooting down Iranian drones and missiles. He said of 330 drones and missiles launched by Iran, only four or five hit the ground in Israel.

“And none of them did any significant damage,” he said. “It’s a reminder of the quality of the Israeli military. It’s a reminder of the fact that the Israelis have friends, starting with the United States.”

The U.S. vetoes a Palestinian bid for recognition as a full U.N. member state.

The Security Council has consistently called for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a result that has failed to materialize during negotiations between the two sides. In Washington, a spokesman for the State Department, Vedant Patel, said before the vote that the statehood resolution was dead on arrival.

“It remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the support of the United States and other partners,” Mr. Patel told reporters at a news briefing on Thursday.

The United States, along with the four other permanent members of the Council, can veto any action before it. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, praised the U.S. decision to block the proposal on Thursday, saying, “The shameful proposal was rejected. Terrorism will not be rewarded.”

The resolution had asked the 15-member Security Council to recommend to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations,” diplomats said.

China was one of 12 countries that voted in favor of the proposal, and its ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, said he found the U.S. veto “most disappointing.”

“The decade-long dream of the Palestinian people ruthlessly dashed,” he said.

Two countries, Britain and Switzerland, abstained from the vote, saying they supported a two-state solution but that the war in Gaza must be resolved first.

“We must keep our focus on securing an immediate pause in order to get aid in and hostages out, “ said Barbara Woodward, Britain’s ambassador to the U.N.

Israel was admitted as a full U.N. member in 1949. The Palestinian Authority has been seeking a state made up of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for decades; those territories have all been captured or annexed by Israel. The Arab League founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964 with a charter stressing self-determination for Palestinians and the rejection of the creation of the State of Israel.

Little progress has been made on achieving statehood since Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, which established a peace process aimed at a two-state solution. In 2007, the militant group Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority — which President Mahmoud Abbas leads and which exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank — from power in the Gaza Strip.

Complicating the Palestinian application for statehood is the war that began when Hamas led terrorist attacks on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and prompted Israel’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza. That war has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gazan health ministry. The conflict has spilled into the occupied West Bank and neighboring countries like Lebanon and has drawn Iran into the fray.

Anushka Patil contributed reporting.

 https://www.nytimes.com/section/world/middleeast