While Tehran moves ever closer to building atomic weapons, its proxy forces are gaining in strength throughout the Middle East and its arsenal of sophisticated missiles and drones is growing larger and deadlier—all with the support of both Russia and China. Seth Cropsey examines this development in light of Iranian and American grand strategy, while cautioning that Israel’s chances of knocking out the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program—as it did Iraq’s in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007—are growing slimmer by the day:

Israel no longer has a great enough margin of military superiority to be able to [take aggressive action against Iran’s nuclear facilities] without serious risks. Unlike in 2013 or 2018, Iran now has offensive military capabilities. Israel has prevented Iran from fully rebuilding Hizballah, conducting a large-scale interdiction campaign against Iranian supply lines in Syria and likely working with the [Kurdish] peshmerga in Iraq. But as Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates, Iran’s unmanned aerial systems and loitering munitions are cheap, mobile, and effective.

Taken alongside [Iran’s] 2019 attacks on the Saudi oil installations of Abqaiq and Khurais, it is obvious that Iran can respond to any strike with large-scale strategic bombardment. Moreover, Iranian cruise and ballistic missiles can now target sites throughout the Middle East and, if deployed to Iraq or Syria, hit Western bases in Cyprus and ships throughout the Levantine basin. Iranian air defenses, while currently still porous, are improving with the development of S-300-style air defenses and, quite likely, Chinese technological support.

Iranian breakout, meanwhile, would be immensely destabilizing to the region. It would provide Iran a nuclear umbrella under which it could intensify its proxy activities. . . . The most critical impact, however, would be on Iranian prestige. As a nuclear power with links to Beijing and Moscow, Tehran would become a bona-fide international force. It would be capable of dealing as a near-peer with the other authoritarian powers on the Eurasian landmass, thereby contributing to its goal of regional Islamic revolution. The United States would thus face three major-power threats in Eurasia, not two.

But, Cropsey goes on to argue, the U.S., acting in concert with Israel, has the ability to prevent such a grim scenario.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.