Last Sunday, a documentary aired on Israeli television about the Kiryat Shmona terrorist attack, which in its time was one of the worst in the country’s history. Amy Spiro writes:

The terrorists, affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, crossed into Israel early on the morning of April 11, 1974, managing to go undetected for more than an hour. Their first target was an elementary school, but the classrooms were empty since it was the intermediate days of Passover.

They then crossed the street, entered the apartment building at 13 Yehuda Halevi Street and killed a number of residents before moving to the building next door, No. 15, first killing the gardener, then climbing the stairs and shooting everyone they encountered.

The three terrorists barricaded themselves in an apartment on the top floor, where an exchange of gunfire ultimately blew up the backpack of explosives they were carrying, killing all three. Two IDF soldiers were also killed in the incident, alongside sixteen civilians, including eight children. . . .

In the decades that have followed, the horrific massacre has largely faded from the public consciousness, with many unaware that the terror attack ever happened and little national remembrance.

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.