Many people that I respect are calling for a massive retaliation from Israel against Iran after Iran’s missile and drone attack on April 13. While I disagree, Israel will do what it will do. I think that context has been dropped leading to an overreaction.

Having called for the US to attack Iran since 1979, I don’t see yesterday’s attack as being cataclysmic. Reported damage includes an injured 10 year old girl and ineffective damage to an airbase.

While I agree that ending the Iranian regime is the crux of de-escalation of instability in the region, now is an inopportune time. Europe is obsessed with Ukraine while the US has higher priority issues in east Asia. Thus Iran remains as a low priority for the West with focus on containment and occasional efforts at détente.

For the sake of argument, what can Israel do immediately against Iran if the US doesn’t lead? Without going green glass, Israel has limited capability to strike Iran directly with missiles and bombers. Depleting such resources would make them unavailable against Hamas and Hezbollah. Further such attacks risk retaliation from Iran which would further degrade Israeli missile defense capabilities.

At this time, it is better for Israel to not be tricked by Iran into being distracted from its Gaza mission against Hamas. Israel has already had a 6 month mobilization just to pacify Gaza, which remains incomplete. Meanwhile, Israel is busy deterring Hezbollah when in the past Israel failed to take out Hezbollah in a one-on-one fight. Currently strained to fight on one front while holding on another front, Israel doesn’t have the capacity to open a third military front against Iran. Thus in context, in the near term, Israel’s best strategy is to defeat Hamas, Iran’s proxy, while holding off Iran’s other proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

In the longer term, after Hamas has been ended, Israel can retaliate against Iran. Such an attack should scale in a way that cripples Iran’s ability to project power against Israel either by proxies or missile/drone attack. Ukraine has demonstrated the effectiveness of drone attacks against oil infrastructure. From a ship in the Gulf of Oman, Israel could launch a swarm of drone attacks to cripple Iran’s economy by hitting critical constraints in Iran’s oil infrastructure: ports, pipelines, refineries, and storage facilities.

Obviously, Israel attacking Iranian oil infrastructure is contrary to the US’ important interests related to the free flow of commerce in the region, but so are Houthi (Iran’s proxy) attacks on Red Sea shipping. However, Israel will act in Israel’s interest when the US fails to lead, or leads irresponsibly as the feckless Biden Administration has. While I generally focus on the US’ many interests, I can’t pretend that other countries will not pursue their own vital interests when their people are threatened by military force.

This brief Israel versus Iran case study is useful in that it points out that reality limits capacity, even of US military power. If we don’t plan to start throwing around mushroom clouds to solve our foreign policy problems, we need to understand that the US military is structured to fight in only one war theater while holding in another as was demonstrated by Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 80s, Secretary of State Schultz and Secretary of Defense Weinberger would have conflicts when State wanted to threaten more than Defense could do. In today’s woke-crippled US military, we have a similar problem of utopian overpromisers in State getting the US into more messes at the same time than Defense can solve by destruction.

Extra point: In fairness to those calling for an immediate and robust Israeli retaliation against Iran, here is an example of their argument: