For all the talk of the threat Iran posed to Israel and the wider region, Netanyahu never pulled the trigger on a major military operation. Instead, he authorized sporadic high-risk, high-reward operations from Israel’s Mossad spy agency, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the stealing of the country’s nuclear archive.

U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites could heighten the threat to American operators in the region, an organisation that monitors flight risks warned on Sunday, as some airlines cancelled flights to and from Dubai and Doha.

Its website showed airlines were not flying in the airspace over Iran, Iraq, Syria and Israel. They have chosen other routings such as north via the Caspian Sea or south via Egypt