At present, Israel remains focused on the stories that haven’t happened yet. One is the possible hostage deal, announced with much confidence as imminent by Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S., before Hamas declared that it won’t participate in the next round of negotiations. The other remains the Iranian attack, which, according to widespread speculation in the media, might be timed for the fast of Tisha b’Av, which begins tonight. Amir Taheri, examining the signals coming from Tehran, thinks Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may be preparing to back down from its threats:

To start with, there is zero popular support for dragging Iran into a war. . . . Next, any war with Israel would come in the shape of air attacks by warplanes, drones, and missiles. As Iran has no air force worth speaking of, Israel would have the advantage. Iran is 88 times the size of Israel, and being unable to protect its skies would be a sitting duck.

Israel, by contrast, has a small airspace to secure, which it does with its multilayered air- and missile-defense system, and support from twelve allies in the region and beyond. Even if the ayatollah manages to kill many Israelis and Palestinians in an initial raid, he may be putting his whole regime at risk.

Exposed as a big talker and small achiever, he could face an internal popular uprising. Khamenei knows that, and . . . is trying to step back from the brink with a minimum loss of face.

To Taheri, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rhetoric suggests that he is more likely to leave his country’s various proxy militias to take action on their own, without guaranteeing “automatic intervention by Tehran if they are attacked.” He concludes:

All that, of course, is speculation. But the fact is that anyone who thinks Khamenei would risk his own skin for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, [Iraq’s] Hashd al-Shaabi, and Hizballah needs to have his head examined.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.