Since the so-called stabbing intifada began in late 2015, Palestinian violence against Israel and Israelis has increased. But Israel’s response has remained, in the words of the retired IDF colonel Eran Lerman, “moderate and well-calibrated.”

It is true that perpetrators and would-be perpetrators are apprehended and sometimes killed. But the attitude toward the population at large, and toward the economy of the West Bank, is deliberately geared to avoid collective punishment and give the peaceful majority a stake in stability.

This strategy is not “a matter of leftist leanings in the IDF high command, misguided moral musings, undue respect for the opinion pages of Haaretz, or an inordinate fear of the International Criminal Court,” writes Lerman. Rather, it’s an effective cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the counter-terrorism lessons learned by both Americans and Israelis in the first decade of the 21st century:

Many of the senior officers are themselves veterans—as younger officers—of the intensive clashes of 2000-04 (mistakenly referred to by many as “the second intifada,” though this was not a popular uprising but a campaign of violence conducted from above—“Mister Arafat’s War,” as Thomas Friedman called it back then). They well remember the lessons learned during that period. Some have also internalized aspects of American field manuals on counterinsurgency, which bear the marks of what David Petraeus and others learned in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some surprising recent comments from Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah seem to support such a strategy, Lerman observes. At a meeting with Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, Hamdallah “offered uncharacteristic praise of Israel’s measured response to the wave of violence that began in October 2015,” feeling “obliged to take note—in public!—of Israel’s moderate and well-calibrated response.”

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.