From the BBC World Service, welcome to the documentary, the home of original storytelling.

I'm James Reynolds here with a bonus episode of The Global Story, looking at one big story in detail every weekday and in this episode we ask if Iran's

attack on Israel marks a turning point for the Middle East. On Saturday nights, Iran carried out direct attacks on Israel for the very first time.

Tehran launched more than 300 drones and missiles from Iranian territory.

The skies above Iraq, Jordan and Israel lit up with explosions as Israel and its allies intercepted 99% of them.

It has been an extraordinary,

worrying and dangerous 24 hours in the Middle East.

And the rest of the world is watching cautiously wondering what could happen next.

As we are recording this late on Sunday afternoon in London.

That is not yet clear.

But we are here to try to make sense of what's been going on and how the players at the

centre of this confrontation might decide their next move.

Iran said the attack was in retaliation for an airstrike carried out two weeks ago on one of its own

consulates in Damascus widely thought to have been carried out by Israel.

But the animosity between these two countries goes back much further than that.

The BBC's chief international correspondent, Leucet, has been following these dramatic events

as they unfolded from Jerusalem.

Hi, Lees, did you get any sleep?

Well, I don't think many people hear God sleep not with the sound of the air sirens and

the explosions up in the air and the really, really profound uncertainty about what was happening and then even more nerve-wracking what would happen after this unprecedented Iranian attack against Israel.

The attack was launched by dedicated enemy whose leaders have in the past

threatened to wipe Israel off the map,

...