Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said Monday that Israel is considering what the next step should be in response to the Iranian retaliatory attack over the weekend.  But what Israel is certain of, is that the Iranian strike “will be met with a response.”

Halevi said on Monday that his country will for certain respond to Iran’s weekend attack, but he did not elaborate on when and how as world leaders urged against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence in the Middle East.  Any kind of retaliation threatens to push this conflict into the realms of World War 3, and that’s a fate the entire globe would like to avoid.

Iran’s attack was more about “saving face” than anything else, especially considering they did limited damage as most of the drones and missiles were stopped before they could do anything.

According to a report by The Associated Press, the Iranian attack on Saturday came in response to a suspected Israeli strike two weeks earlier on an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed two Iranian generals. It marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The army’s spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, also said Israel will respond “at the time that we choose.” Both Hagari and Halevi spoke at the Nevatim air base in southern Israel, which Hagari said suffered only light damage in the Iranian attack.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been huddling with top officials to discuss a possible response. For a second straight day, the government made no announcements on any decisions, however, in a conversation with U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Netanyahu said that “Israel will do whatever is required to defend itself,” the prime minister’s office announced.

US Declines Israel’s Invitation to Start WW3 (For Now)

It’s tough to say if we should expect a response or not. It seems like there is a push by several ruling classes to instigate a third world war, but we’ve seen warring rulers before and nothing close to that scale has materialized. Either way, be ready, just in case. If Israel does respond militarily, this will get ugly really quickly.