It is worth considering how close they came to the edge and how deep the abyss that lay before them. This was the first time Iran and Israel had attacked each other directly.

Some analysts say the Iranian attack was the largest combined missile and drone assault ever – bigger than anything Russia has levelled against Ukraine. It was certainly the first external bombardment of Israel since Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles in 1991.

Most of the 300-plus Iranian drones and missiles were shot down or failed en route. But I watched from our office in Jerusalem as the night sky was lit up by Israeli air defences trying to bring down the ballistic missiles flying overhead. All it would have taken is for one GPS guidance system to fail for a missile to land in an urban area at huge civilian cost.

“I don’t think people realise how close we were that weekend,” one senior Western security official told me. “It could have been a very different story.”

Yet some in the West think positives can be drawn from the attack on 13 April and Israel’s limited retaliation last week. They argue it was a huge intelligence success to predict the Iranian strike, that the defence of Israel was an outstanding example of allied military cooperation, and that both Iran and Israel learned how to climb down the escalatory ladder.

Let’s take the intelligence operation first. I am told the US learned about Iran’s plans on the Wednesday morning before the attack on Saturday evening. And crucially, they discovered the scale of Iran’s ambition.

“We got wind that Iran’s response would be at the top end of expectations,” said one high-level Western source. “And that was a bit of a shock. But it helped galvanise the international response.”

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