While Israel continues to downplay the risks, experts see the recent rounds of attacks on Syria as exceedingly dangerous, threatening to ignite the powderkeg of Syria’s internal civil war into a region-wide conflict.

Syria and Israel have been in a state of war for decades, but haven’t fought seriously in nearly 40 years. The new strikes bring the two sides back to the brink of a war which, despite the rhetoric, both sides have long sought to avoid.

Israel launched two separate attacks over the past several days, with a Friday strike followed up with a round of Sunday strikes causing explosions around the capital city. Casualties were reported, but the details are still unclear.

Israeli officials say that they don’t believe there will be any retaliation for the strikes, though publicly no officials have even gone on the record confirming that the attack took place, leaving everything to anonymous comments in the Israeli press.