Yaakov Amidror, Israel’s former national-security adviser, criticizes both those who would answer the current wave of attacks with draconian measures and those who, to the contrary, would offer new concessions:

Tense times like these breed a tendency to infringe on the rights of the minority from which the terrorists emerge. We have seen how even the leaders of the most enlightened countries—the same ones who preach to Israel about tolerance and leniency—sideline all semblances of tolerance when they are hit close to home.

Israel should refrain from imposing harsh and unnecessary measures on the Palestinians, such as revoking work permits from Palestinians across Judea and Samaria. This measure would affect the livelihoods of thousands of families, when so far it is only one terrorist who abused his work permit to carry out an attack. . . .

The wave of terrorism is likely to continue until it proves itself useless—something that brings only grief to the perpetrators and their families. This is why Israel cannot offer any gestures to the Palestinians. Israel must make it clear that this prolonged violence will yield nothing.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.