Israel threatened a retaliation, and it came before dawn on Friday morning. Early indications suggest it was a single strike and on a deliberately chosen target - if that is the case, then this doesn't appear to be the devastating response the Israeli war cabinet had warned of. There is an airbase outside Isfahan which is connected to Iran's aircraft manufacturing industry - if this was the target then it appears to have been carefully chosen as a response to the drones flown at Israel on Saturday night: you fly drones at us, we take out the place they were built.
Escalation in the Middle East has rounded out a rough week for financial markets. Barring a reversal, world stocks are set to log their sharpest weekly drop since September and the dollar is at year-to-date highs. Even before Asian markets turned decisively risk averse on reports of explosions in Iran, and an Israeli strike, investors were rattled by disappointing results and hawkish Fedspeak.
"We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist," the pop superstar sings on her new album's title track