In his short story “Sisters’ Boy,” Joseph Epstein tells of three siblings, getting on in years, divided by a squabble. It begins thus:

In late November, two weeks or so before my annual trip to Florida, I texted my sister Bobbie in Boca Raton to give her the date of my arrival and asked her to pass it along to our sister Freddy, who lives in nearby Delray Beach. Freddy, born Fradyl, now in her middle seventies, long ago decided to take a pass on the digital age, and has no computer, smart-phone, iPads, Kindles, or any of that other, as she calls it, dreck. The text that came back read, “I no longer speak to your sister. Tell her yourself.”

When I called Freddy to ask her what was going on, she said, controlled but with genuine anger in her voice: “Your sister’s son Jeremy, the fabulous stockbroker, caused my son-in-law Barry to lose some 60,000 dollars, and at a time when the kids badly need the money. Leslie is pregnant with their third child, and Barry’s job is very shaky.”

“What did Jeremy do, exactly?” I asked.

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.