Earlier this month, an American federal court ruled that families of victims of terrorist attacks carried out by individuals—including the wave of stabbing and car-rammings that beset Israel in 2015 and 2016—could sue the countries that fund the groups behind the attacks. For instance, the court concluded, when a Palestinian murdered the American military veteran Taylor Force in Tel Aviv in 2016, Hamas could be held responsible—as could Syria and Iran, which support Hamas. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner explains that Israeli and American policymakers should follow the court’s lead when understanding the misleadingly named phenomenon of the lone-wolf terrorist:

[T]errorist organizations use “lone-wolf” attacks to harm Israel without assuming direct responsibility. . . . Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad use social media as a tool to instruct followers to carry out low-intensity attacks on Israeli targets, after which they only assume tacit responsibility.

These murderous acts, therefore, are anything but spontaneous; they can be predicted and perhaps even foiled in advance. A year prior to his attack, for example, the terrorist who murdered Taylor Force listened to a sermon by Sheikh Mohamad al-Arefe, a radical Islamist cleric from Saudi Arabia who preaches the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. About a month before carrying out his attack, the terrorist posted a message on his Facebook page that unmistakably implied his desire to die a shahid (martyr). Two days after his attack, Hamas proclaimed responsibility for the attack on various online platforms affiliated with the organization, calling the terrorist a shahid and a warrior.

The state of Israel must adopt the spirit behind the American court’s ruling and act accordingly. To eliminate the waves of “lone-wolf” attacks, Israel must also target the people who dispatch these terrorists, rather than just focus on direct prevention. Lone-wolf terrorists are cogs in an orchestrated [strategy], and action must also be taken against the states and organizations that support them.

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.