King Herod, rightly reviled by Jews and Christians alike, sponsored magnificent construction projects throughout the land of Israel—including the renovation of the Second Temple and the construction of the city of Caesarea and palace-fortresses at Jericho and Herodium. Of the last-named, David Laskin writes:

Halfway up an artificial mountain that the king had conjured from the desert for his final resting place, I stood gazing at what was left of the royal mausoleum: a couple of courses of limestone blocks as exquisitely faceted as jewels. Below, the arcing rows of a Roman theater descended in diminishing semicircles to the disc of the stage. Everything around me, even the contours of the earth itself, had been altered at the decree of this ancient ruler. Time has toppled the columns and blurred the carvings, but the majesty (and hubris) of this place remain intact.

Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem may be more transcendent and his mesa-top retreat at Masada more spectacular, but Herodium (about ten miles south of Jerusalem) was where I channeled the spirit of the man. I was also channeling the spirit of a monster. From 37 to 4 BCE, Herod the Great (not to be confused with a slew of lesser heirs and successors who shared his name) ruled Judea with a bloody, iron fist. Though the account by the Gospel writer Matthew of an “exceeding wroth” Herod slaughtering the innocents of Bethlehem is probably apocryphal, the king did murder a wife, a mother-in-law, and three sons, along with untold numbers of enemies and rivals.

Yet he was one of the world’s great builders—an instinctive architectural genius who planned, sited, sourced and landscaped magnificent structures of classical antiquity. Epic was his preferred scale. No project was too ambitious or daring, whether it was throwing up a city from scratch or replacing Judaism’s holiest site from the ground up. Judea rejoiced when Herod died, but I found myself breathless with admiration after a week spent tracking his footsteps.

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.