“No one wants to run up the escalation ladder,” a senior administration official said, briefing reporters Sunday on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. “Israel has to think carefully what it does next.”

Some Israeli public figures are also urging caution, amid cries for urgent revenge from right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.

Israel could leverage an improved military and diplomatic standing to find “a more creative and sophisticated way to respond, perhaps at a later stage and in line with previous covert actions it took against Iran, which will better serve its national interest,” said Nimrod Goren, a senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

In Israel, Netanyahu’s war cabinet on Sunday declared Israel would respond to Iran “in a way and time that suits us,” as member Benny Gantz said. And it will be a surprise, he said.

Iran’s attack was anything but a surprise.

Since the April 1 assassination of a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and six other officers in an airstrike on a diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria — an attack attributed to Israel — Iran has steadily promised revenge. In the days leading up to the overnight attack this weekend, Iran had informed some countries in the region that it was planning an attack, and the first drones were launched hours before they reached Israeli airspace, giving U.S. and Western spy satellites plenty of time to detect and track the incoming fusillade.

Several countries who have cordial relations with Iran, such as Turkey and Lebanon, urged “de-escalation” by both Israel and Iran.

Iran said Sunday its retaliation for the April 1 incident was completed. In the telling of officials there, the strike was an awesome display of military might that was also calibrated so as not to tip the region into all-out war. Iran supporters also pointed out that Israel needed the active help of no less than five nations to stop the onslaught and that it could not do it on its own.

They have taken pride in the fact that the strike crossed what has been something of a red line for the last 40 years of hostility between Israel and Tehran: direct fire from Iranian soil to Israeli soil.

Iran had long relied on factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen to carry out attacks on Israel.

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