Experts believe that Israel's "retaliatory" attack on Iran on Saturday morning marked the beginning of a new and more dangerous phase in the years-long conflict between the two countries, but it appears, at least for now, to have stopped short of sparking an all-out war.

The attack on Iran on Saturday morning was the first time Israel publicly acknowledged carrying out a military operation inside Iran, after years of maintaining a strategic silence about its assassinations and sabotage on Iranian soil. It was also one of the few attacks by foreign air forces in Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Although the attack was a critical and dangerous moment, Iran did not immediately set a timeframe for retaliation or its next response. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that while Iran was “obligated to defend itself,” it was aware of its “responsibilities toward regional peace and security,” avoiding the bombastic language that has characterized Iran’s initial responses to previous Israeli attacks.

This has eased fears of an uncontrollable conflict, even if the possibility of such a clash has come closer than ever.

“Years of covert war have now entered a fully open conflict — albeit a managed one, for now,” the New York Times quoted an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based research group, as saying in an article on Saturday. “Tehran can swallow these strikes against military installations without responding in a way that invites further Israeli retaliation.”

Experts say that after weeks of pressure from the United States to scale back the scope of its attack, Israel avoided striking sensitive nuclear enrichment sites and oil production facilities in response to the massive ballistic missile barrage that Iran launched at Israel on October 1.

Israel claims that its warplanes focused on nearly 20 military installations, including air defense batteries, radar stations and missile production sites, but so far it has not documented any of these claims.

According to US media reports, the relatively limited focus of those attacks on “scattered military sites” in Iran allowed life to return to normal in the aftermath of the strike, with the aviation authority reopening Iranian airspace and state-run news agencies broadcasting images and videos of things returning to normal — signs, analysts said, that Iran’s leadership is trying to downplay the significance of the Israeli attack and reduce domestic expectations of a major Iranian response.

“This is the beginning of a new phase, a dangerous phase, with a lot of sensitivities,” Yoel Guzansky, an Israeli expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based research group, was quoted as saying by The New York Times. “But the tone I’m hearing from Iran is basically, ‘Oh, this is nothing.’”

As a result, Guzansky added, “it is possible that the two sides will at least close this round, and that we will not see Iranian retaliation — or if we do see it, it will be small in scope.”

However, analysts warned that even if the recent escalation subsides, it has pushed Iran and Israel further along a path toward a conflict that is difficult to control.

Israel is still waging its brutal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, and is still engaged in a war against Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional ally, with Israeli forces carrying out large-scale air and ground attacks. There is no end in sight to these conflicts, and any of them could lead to further escalations between Israel and Iran, which has proven increasingly willing to attack Israel in defense of its allies and partners.

For years, the two countries have been engaged in a covert war in which each side undermined the other’s interests, through proxies or other means, while rarely taking responsibility for its attacks. This covert conflict turned into an open confrontation after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, unleashing a devastating Israeli war on Gaza that continues to kill and injure Palestinians by the hundreds every day, and has also led to a regional conflict between Israel and Iran and its allies.

The war in Gaza prompted Iran’s other allies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, to strike Israel in solidarity with their Palestinian ally. In turn, Israel has stepped up its attacks on Iranian interests across the region, leading to direct exchanges between the two countries, first in April and now in October.

Some analysts fear that Israel, despite its relative restraint on Saturday, may be setting the stage for a larger offensive in the wake of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5. The election will set in motion a transition of power in which Washington’s influence and focus on the Iran-Israel conflict will diminish.