Washington, DC – The response from US President Joe Biden's administration to Iran's historic missile and drone attack on Israel has been two-fold: Washington has re-upped its pledge to always stand by its "ironclad" ally Israel, while also appealing to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu not to take further action that could drag the region into wider war. The days ahead will show if those two options are compatible, or if the two governments' priorities are on collision course, analysts told Al Jazeera. In the short term, the Iranian attack is a coup for both Israel and its backers in the US: From their perspective, it offers renewed justification for military support to Israel while weakening the world's focus on alleged abuses committed in Gaza in seven months of war, according to Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Washington-based Quincy Institute. But defiance from Netanyahu to US calls for restraint could find the Biden administration further hamstrung by its political and ideological commitments to Israel, which could eventually drag Washington into a wider war, he added. "The Israelis have been told by Biden to take this as a win and stop here," Parsi told Al Jazeera.

The response by Israel and other nations to Iran's aerial attack kept the majority of its drones and missiles from landing in Israel, ensuring they caused only light damage and a handful of injuries, Israeli officials said. An unexpected -- and for some, unwelcome -- actor played a role in Israel's defense: Jordan, the Arab kingdom next door. Jordan fought four wars with Israel between 1948 and 1973 before signing a peace treaty in 1994. Its population is heavily made up of Palestinians, and their descendants, who were barred from returning to their homes by Israel after the 1948 war that followed the establishment of the Jewish state. Jordan's involvement was welcomed by older Israelis who remembered when Jordan would shell Israel.

US President Joe Biden has condemned the Iranian drone attacks on military facilities in Israel, reiterating Washington DC's "ironclad" support and a coordinated Group of Seven (G7) diplomatic response, even as reports started to emerge that he is also seeking to de-escalate the situation. Biden cut short a trip to Delaware and returned to the US capital to meet advisers following the late Saturday night attack, the White House said in a statement. The statement said that US forces and facilities had not been hit, adding that the US helped Israel in taking down "nearly all" of the attacking drones and missiles. The US president also he reiterated the "ironclad" support for Israel's security in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has had strained relations over Israel's handling of the war in Gaza. "I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel," the White House quoted Biden as saying.

The White House vowed Saturday that the United States' support for Israel's security is "ironclad," pledging to stand with the Jewish state and "support their defense" after Iran launched an aerial drone attack towards the country Saturday afternoon. Iran launched drones from its own territory toward Israel late Saturday, days after its Supreme Leader warned it would hit back in response to an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria that left several generals dead. "Iran has begun an airborne attack against Israel," White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement Saturday. "President Biden is being regularly updated on the situation by his national security team and will meet with them this afternoon at the White House." The White House said the president's team "is in constant communication with Israeli officials as well as other partners and allies."

The White House revealed it is looking into reports the Israeli army has been using an AI system to populate its'kill list' of alleged Hamas terrorists, hours after President Joe Biden's call with Benjamin Netanyahu. The report cited six Israeli intelligence officers, who admitted to using an AI called'Lavender' to classify as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants -- marking these people and their homes as acceptable targets for air strikes. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the reports had not been verified, but they were investigating. Israel has vehemently denied the AI's role with an army spokesperson describing the system as'auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.' However, during the call Biden reportedly threatened that he would condition the US' support for the attack in Gaza if the Israeli government didn't protect civilians and aid workers from offensive assaults.

A UK vessel shot down a Houthi drone in the Red Sea, the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence has said, as tensions in the Middle East soar amid the ongoing war in Gaza. "Yesterday HMS Diamond successfully repelled a drone attack from the Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea," read a statement from the ministry published on Sunday on X. "Diamond destroyed a drone targeting her, with no injuries or damage sustained to Diamond or her crew," it added. There was no immediate comment from the Houthis. The Yemen-based group previously pledged to target Israel-linked vessels in the region as part of an effort to pressure the country's government to end its bombardment of Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid supplies into the coastal Palestinian enclave. Gaza has been under heavy bombardment by Israeli forces since October 7, when Hamas fighters stormed communities in southern Israel, killing at least 1,139 people and taking about 240 others captive, according to Israeli officials.

Israel's war on Gaza, now well into its fourth month, has taken a toll on its own economy with many industries pausing business even as a few continue to get new investments. Since October, Israel's government has subsidised the salaries of reportedly 360,000 mobilised reservists deployed to Gaza – many of whom are high-tech industry workers in finance, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. In November, the Bank of Israel put the war's "gross effects" on Israel at 198 billion shekels ( 53bn) and pared back its estimates for economic growth to 2 percent per year for 2023 and 2024, down from 2.3 percent and 2.8 percent. In December, Israel's Finance Ministry said that the war will likely cost Israel approximately 13.8bn this year if its high-intensity phase concludes during the first quarter of 2024. In the midst of that, experts are watching to see how business is doing on the ground.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has blamed Israel for a strike in Syria that killed four senior members of the group. "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel," Iran's Mehr news agency announced, citing an unnamed source. Nour News, another Iranian news agency that allegedly has close ties to the country's intelligence networks, identified Gen. Sadegh Omidzadeh, intelligence deputy of the IRGC's Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy among the dead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that another Iranian and a Syrian -- unidentified at this time -- also died in the strike. The strike destroyed a building in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh that the IRGC officials had allegedly used as a base of operations.

JERUSALEM – Beginning Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists used remote controlled drones to disarm tanks and knock out surveillance cameras during its surprise attack on Israel, through to last week, when a Hezbollah drone from Lebanon landed directly in an army base in northern Israel, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly becoming part of the weapons arsenal used by Iranian-backed non-state players in their war against the Jewish state. While Israel has in place what it calls "an aerial defense array" – used multiple times over the past three months to thwart "hostile aircraft" from Gaza and Lebanon – as UAVs become easier to obtain, manufacture, enhance and weaponize, Israel, as well as other countries around the world, are racing to contend with an ever more lethal form of combat that is already outpacing existing military defense systems. "The Israeli – and the U.S. – militaries have been using drones for a long time, especially in counterterrorism, for intelligence gathering or for precision strikes in order to distinguish between civilians and fighters," Dr. Liran Antebi, program director of advanced technologies and national security at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told Fox News Digital. Xtend's Griffon Counter UAVs, with speeds of up to 93.1 miles per hour, and AI technology are being used by the IDF to identify and kill rogue drones. "However, what was once the silver bullet used by democracies in counterterrorism and to act in more ethical ways, is now in the hands of terrorists or non-democratic states and is being used in the opposite way," she said.

A senior Hezbollah commander said the terrorist organization does not want an expanded war with Israel Tuesday, the same day that it launched a drone attack against an Israeli army base. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group, claimed the Tuesday attack was in retribution for an Israeli strike that killed Wissam al-Tawil, who commanded Hezbollah's Radwan forces. Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem released a televised speech stating that his group does not seek an all-out war with Israel, "but if Israel expands it, the response is inevitable to the maximum extent required to deter Israel." President Biden's administration has sought to prevent Israel's war against Hamas from boiling over into a regional conflict. Nevertheless, Iran's proxy terrorist groups have carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets since October.