A successful large-scale Iranian attack on Israel of the kind that would require a decisive response from Jerusalem would certainly constitute a significant escalation of the current war. And judging from the social-media feeds of former diplomats and the headlines of CNN, the New York Times, and other outlets, that should be everyone’s biggest fear. This also seems to be the view of the Biden administration, which is constantly urging restraint and sending diplomats to deescalate tensions. Efraim Inbar examines the flaws of such thinking:

In many situations, climbing the escalation ladder is probably the best way to put an end to violence. Indeed, the Hamas raids and atrocities are a direct result of the containment policy conducted for years by Israel. Instead of escalating and exacting a high price from Hamas to change its strategic calculus, Israel preferred to absorb many rocket attacks and refrained from a strong riposte that could lead to escalation. This only gave time to Hamas to build its military capabilities and acquire the might to withstand an Israeli offensive now in its tenth month.

Similarly, Israel’s reluctance to preempt in Lebanon allowed Hizballah to build a formidable missile arsenal. This organization grew to become a monster that since October 8 has conducted, undeterred, a war of attrition against Israel. Attrition warfare is the best outcome for the population-centric Iranian strategy and the worst possible scenario for Israel. . . . Only escalation intended to eliminate the missile arsenal can put an end to the war of attrition.

War against Hizballah is inevitable; Israel might have to wait for more hospitable circumstances, but they will come.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.