Political elite under pressure from variety of sources, with US urging it to step back from the brink

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The Iranian government has belittled the scale and effectiveness of the Israeli attack on its military sites, but hardliners in the parliament insisted that the attack breached Iranian red lines and requires a swift response, preferably at a time when Israel is already enmeshed in Lebanon and Gaza.

The internal Iranian debate on how to respond to the long-awaited Israeli attack turns on whether to treat Israel’s breach of Iranian national sovereignty as too grave to be ignored, or instead to heed the advice coming from the region and from the US to acknowledge the relatively limited nature of the attack and to step back from the brink by not launching reprisals.