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Iran's Attack on Israel Reveals New and Aggressive Regional Ambitions
(Wall Street Journal) Laurence Norman - Iran's ballistic-missile salvos aimed at Israel signal Tehran's desire to project power across the region, put Washington on the defensive, and demonstrate that it retains significant strike capabilities. Iran's regime has been emboldened by surviving more than a month of airstrikes by the U.S. and Israel and has established some deterrence by showing it can blockade the Strait of Hormuz and attack its relatively vulnerable Gulf neighbors. "Iran's decisions show they believe they have the upper hand, with Trump deterred from renewing the fighting," said Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Israel wants the freedom to keep attacking Hizbullah in Lebanon even if the war in Iran ends. It also would prefer to keep going at Iran to further degrade its industrial capacity. Prime Minister Netanyahu said Monday he had acted to ensure that Iran and Hizbullah couldn't "impose on us an intolerable new equation" in which Israel was unable to respond to Hizbullah or Tehran attacks.