Iran should be taken seriously, claiming that the missiles it launched yesterday morning were aimed at a "secret Israeli facility" in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
As has been reported many times before, the Mossad is active in this area, and it is likely that the Iranians sought to harm it in response to the killing of Revolutionary Guards members last week, during an airstrike in Damascus.
Iran has a long open account with Israel.
It mainly concerns the thousands of attacks carried out against the smuggling of weapons and the Shiite militias' established attempts in Syria, but it also has other reasons - from the desire to avenge last year's elimination of the nuclear project, Muhsan Fahrizadeh, to the Iranian effort to deter Israel from continuing operations against it.
Although Iran has acted several times in recent years against what it has identified as Israeli targets (mainly Israeli-owned civilian ships), the launch of the missiles yesterday is a step up in its activity.
An outgrowth of the weakness of the West
This indicates a high level of self-confidence in Tehran - an outgrowth of the West's weakness in the nuclear talks and the war in Ukraine, which diverts world public opinion to other provinces - and perhaps also a certain sense of immunity.
Assault in Syria (Archive), Photo: APP
As a result, Iran allows itself to be more aggressive than before, both in the nature of its response and its exposure.
The launching of the precision missiles at the Irbil facility is explicitly intended to charge a price per capita;
The fact that they were launched from Iranian soil - and that, unlike in the past, Tehran did not try to hide it - indicates that it has shed a significant element that has characterized its activities so far: , In what appears to be overt defiance.
On the face of it, this is a bad development.
Iran is a much more dangerous rival than Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and the militias in Iraq and Syria alike.
It has an impressive arsenal of weapons, and combined with motivation and audacity - and with the removal of restrictions on its activities - is a dangerous enemy that should not be underestimated, certainly when it seeks to exact a price from Israel in any way, and almost anywhere on the globe.
But this evil also has a clear advantage for Israel.
Not only by the fact that Iran presents to the whole world that it is causing terror and war, but that by operating on its territory, openly, it is freeing Israel to react against it in Iran, openly as well.
If until now Israel had only acted secretly on Iranian soil, and kept its more overt activity to other provinces in the region, it can now operate in Iran freely, defining it as self-defense designed to prevent Iran from continuing along the same line.
This escalation in the long-running war between Israel and Iran was expected.
It was also clear that the emerging agreements surrounding the nuclear deal would accelerate it, as Iran would feel stronger and more liberated than before.
In the global balance of power and interests, there do not seem to be any international forces that have the capacity or desire to prevent this development, leaving Israel and Iran alone in the arena, to a borderless war that is now moving to visible and violent tracks.
Were we wrong?
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