There appears to be an awful lot of secret intra-governmental horse-trading and blunt threats going on behind the scenes.
The United States expects that Israel’s military response to Iran’s strikes will be limited in scope, a senior administration official and a source familiar with the intelligence told CNN.
There is US intelligence to suggest Israel is weighing a narrow and limited strike inside Iran because they feel like they have to respond with a kinetic action of some kind given the unprecedented scale of the Iranian attack, the second source said.
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-new ... index.html
I would estimate the current state of it is:
Israel insists on at least some strike on Iranian soil, on a like-for-like basis.
The US is trying to de-escalate by any means possible, including deals with Israel for equipment (likely not to be announced for a while to make any connection deniable) and getting Iran to accept an Israeli strike.
Iran will, at a minimum, be insisting on no strikes on IRGC or nuke personnel/facilities. They will also publicly deny any accommodation, as above.
This would leave some Iranian missile site/facility as a likely target. Russia will want it not to be anything they are getting as exports.
That leaves older/obsolete ballistic missiles.
The Israelis will doubtless wish to hit Hezbollah and Houthi targets also. Iran can probably get along with that.
Being the Middle East, the web of deals and threats could of course break down at any point, or one side could not keep its promises, or another player could spoil the whole thing with a random act.
Something's gonna happen in the next couple of nights, but who knows what, or whether that will be 'it'.
..till next week, when it all starts again.
