Israel’s retaliation, when it came, was surprisingly limited. Iran minimised the significance of Friday’s air attacks on a military base near Isfahan and other targets, denying they were externally directed. Usually voluble Israeli spokesmen fell strangely silent. It was as if a tacit bilateral agreement had been made to play down the affair – to quietly de-escalate.

Like surreptitious 19th-century duellists illicitly pointing pistols at each other across a misty English meadow at dawn, both countries required that honour be satisfied – but wanted to avoid another noisy public row. Each has fired directly at the other, causing symbolic damage. Now they and their seconds are signalling it’s over – at least for the time being.

If true, it’s a huge, though possibly temporary, relief. It suggests that intense US pressure on Israel to exercise restraint, abetted by Britain and others, paid off. President Joe Biden had urged Israel to “take the win” after Iran’s unprecedented, large-scale air attack last weekend was successfully repulsed. Its leaders didn’t wholly concur.

It is not in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s DNA to turn the other cheek. A former commando, he instinctively resorts to force. And he was urged by hard-right allies to “go berserk”. In the event, his measured response reflects enhanced US leverage. Crucial US assistance in defending Israel last weekend could not be ignored.

It would be foolish to assume this is the end of the matter. Visceral hostility, political and ideological, still separates the two enemies. Both governments are beset by internal divisions that........

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