Iran must be very close to a usable nuclear device to provoke Israel so dramatically. Israel goes off heavily when just a single IDF soldier or civilian is killed. There might be over a few thousand dead civilians and soldiers caught in their skivvies in southern Israel counted by Tuesday and maybe 100s more captive as human shields and torture subjects. Need I remind yall how many rave cuties in skimpy clothes on MDMA were partying at that rave now taken back to Gaza for gang rapes? Also, a lot of you Afghan vets know the word underage isn't really a thing in arab culture so those kids they swiped are in a world of hurt as well. (You've heard the term bacha bazi.) Israel knows this. They will want blood. No quarter.
Iran had to know this much of a transgression is going to send Netanyahu on a hellacious crusade that ends up in Tehran sooner rather than later. Israel has been beating the desk for over a decade about Natanz and Bushehr. The West has been punting the issue bc we know what it took to just basically make a mess and leave in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, and we didn't want to do the hard work in Iran- a much larger country full of easily- stirred Persians.
In the meantime, Iran has been hard at it, buying time through various provocations and negotiations to stockpile, to field-test, to prepare their populace, to preposition militants and arm proxies, and to harden facilities for war with meaningless agreements while cashing Russian and Western checks.
This won't end well. It's a bridge too far for Netanyahu, who is going to face a lot of questions about how the hell this happened so easily on his watch. He is going to have to overachieve and that ends up with large explosions in Tehran and Damascus. How big an explosion? I guess we'll find out.

This post was edited on 10/8/23 at 2:20 pm