On Sunday, Hizballah launched a missile at an Israeli military base, destroying a vehicle but failing to harm any soldiers. The IDF responded by firing some 100 artillery shells at Hizballah positions in Lebanon. Writing before those events, Shmuel Rosner reflected on the series of exchanges of fire between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed guerrilla group that led up to them, as well as various attempted and successful terrorist attacks from Gaza and the West Bank:

Israel is active on five fronts: the West Bank, where violence is contained and yet the situation is volatile; Gaza, where violence threatens to erupt daily; Syria, where Iranian forces keep trying to form a base against Israel that Israel won’t allow; Lebanon, where pro-Iranian forces feel compelled to act in response to Israeli actions; and Iraq, where Israel reportedly operates as part of the war against Iranian expansion.

The situation [in Gaza] shouldn’t be confused with a lull between conflicts or cease-fires. It is . . . a low-intensity, constant war. And what is true for Gaza is truer for Iran. . . . Iran seeks to become the dominant force in the region and admits that such dominance is supposed to lead to, among other things, the destruction of Israel. Israel doesn’t want to be destroyed, so it acts to preempt Iranian attempts to gain dominance.

What made [last] week unique was the increase in the level of seriousness of the actions. For the first time, Israel was outed in such a clear way as a reported aggressor in Iraq. For the first time, Iran was ready to launch missiles from Syria toward Israeli targets. For the first time in a long while, an Israeli was killed by a hidden explosive device—a means of guerrilla warfare. For the first time since the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel is accused of launching an attack in Beirut.

This is not just intensification in numerical terms. This is intensification in qualitative terms—more and not quite the same.

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.