Cabinet said to weigh fresh attack on Iran in response to drone strike on PM’s home

Members of the security cabinet reportedly debated on Sunday the possibility of carrying out another attack on Iran in response to a drone strike on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home in Caesarea earlier this month.

According to an unsourced report in Channel 13 news on Monday, ministers in the cabinet were told Sunday evening that Israel’s strikes on Iran over the weekend did not include its response to the drone attack, which Israel has referred to as an assassination attempt.

The report said that the Israeli response to that will “look completely different” to the strikes carried out on military targets in Iran early Saturday morning by the Israeli Air Force. The different possibilities of such a response were reportedly discussed “for hours” by ministers and security officials, and a full proposal is expected to be presented in the coming days.

Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea was struck on October 19 by an explosive drone launched by Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. The drone cracked glass in a bedroom window but did not penetrate the home, apparently because of reinforced glass and other protections. There were no injuries, and Netanyahu and his wife were not home at the time.

In a statement reacting to the attack at the time, Netanyahu said that “the agents of Iran who tried to assassinate me and my wife today made a bitter mistake.” He said the attack would not deter him from continuing the war, and that anyone who harms Israelis will pay “a heavy price.”

The reported cabinet debate came a day after Israel launched a much-anticipated reprisal strike on Iran following the Islamic Republic’s missile attack on Israel. The strikes came close to a month after the October 1 attack, in which Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms, causing relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.

The Iranian attack came days after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime Hezbollah leader. Iran said the missiles were also a response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran in July widely attributed to Israel.

In an hourslong operation early Saturday morning, dozens of Israeli aircraft targeted strategic military sites across Iran — specifically drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries — with explosions reported in the Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Shiraz areas.