AFTER raining down a barrage of 181 missiles on Israel, Iran has indicated it wants this to be the end of it.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has other ideas. He says there will be a retaliation — and I believe that it will come soon.
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The key question is whether that retaliation is somehow choreographed to simply send a message to Iran, or whether it is calculated to do some real damage to Iranian facilities.
On Tuesday night, former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett tweeted saying: “This is the greatest opportunity in 50 years to change the face of the Middle East.”
He was arguing Israel should destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to “fatally cripple this terrorist regime”.
Bennett was expressing an increasingly prevalent view in Israel — that this is their moment.
That the wheel has turned so much in the last two to three weeks that they have a chance to change the basic dynamics of their security problem.
The idea is they hit all of their opponents hard — including the Iranians — and it will push them all back for five years or more and give Israel breathing space.
With both Hamas and Hezbollah seriously degraded, it must be tempting for the Israelis to think that way.
But it’s also very risky. Iran has vowed to strike back if it is targeted by Israel.
If it is choreographed to send a message, then there is a fair chance this round of attacks will go no further.
But if it’s designed to do as much damage to Iranian targets as possible, there will be another Iranian response.
And it probably won’t be missiles next time, because they aren’t working very well for Iran.
It could be direct attacks on shipping in the Gulf, or initiating terrorist attacks on Israelis or Israeli facilities around the world.
It could also mean attacks on Western facilities, particularly those of America and Britain.
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When Iran can’t get at the Israelis, they go for us. So that’s possible if it goes further.
We will find out soon enough what response the Israelis will launch.
And then we can work out whether we’re heading into a very dangerous regional war.
Or whether it gives us a chance to ratchet back to where we were a couple of weeks ago.