Following a series of Israeli preemptive incursions targeting Iran's nuclear infrastructure and military installations – incursions reportedly encompassing clandestine deployment of UAVs and aerial bombardment resulting in, according to Iranian diplomatic sources at the UN, seventy-eight fatalities and exceeding three hundred and twenty wounded – Iran executed retaliatory ballistic missile and drone strikes. These ripostes caused at least three confirmed deaths and dozens of injuries, further exacerbating the already precarious regional equilibrium and casting a pall over the already attenuated prospects for the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, which, despite being dismissed as "meaningless" by Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli operations, remain, tenuously, on the table, though the escalating hostilities have triggered widespread apprehension regarding the potential for a full-scale conflagration and prompted urgent international appeals for de-escalation.