Neither the missile nor the aircraft that fired it entered Jordanian airspace, the Western officials said, a gesture meant to keep the kingdom out of the conflict after it helped shoot down Iranian weapons last week.

[b]The two Iranian officials said that Iran’s military had not detected anything entering Iran’s airspace on Friday, including drones, missiles and aircraft. Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that no missile attacks had occurred and that Iran’s air defense system had not been activated.

Tensions between Iran and Israel, longtime foes, increased this month in a series of strikes. On April 1, Israeli warplanes struck an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, killing several Iranian armed forces commanders. Iran retaliated last weekend, firing a large salvo of weapons at Israel, almost all of which were intercepted.

Israel, the two Western officials said, had scrapped an earlier plan to fire back on Iran with a large-scale attack. That plan, they said, was replaced with a strike intended to send a quiet but decisive message with the aim of ending the cycle of reprisal.

Israel’s use of drones launched from inside Iran and a missile that it could not detect, the Western officials said, was intended to give Iran a taste of what a larger-scale attack might look like. The attack, they said, was calibrated to make Iran think twice before launching a direct attack on Israel in the future.

Officials from both Iran and Israel refrained from speaking publicly about Friday’s attack, a move that appeared aimed at de-escalating a conflict some fear could spiral into a broader regional war.

Israel’s silence on the attack, an Iranian official said, would allow Tehran to treat the strike as it had previous clandestine attacks in the countries’ long-running shadow war and not prompt an immediate response.