“Measured.” “Targeted.” “Calibrated.”

Those were some of the adjectives bandied about Saturday to describe Israeli airstrikes on Iranian air defenses and missile production facilities. They’re apt. The adjectives, I mean.

Israel and Iran are engaged in a kind of stage-managed dress rehearsal for a war both sides know Tehran can’t really fight, let alone win. If there’s a strategic path to victory for the IRGC in an all-out war scenario with the IDF, I’m not aware of it.

No one’s going to invade Iran, let alone try to occupy it, which means the war would be fought in the sky. Iran has no air force to speak of (they have some old fighters, but the idea of dog fights with the IDF is wholly laughable) and to say their air defenses aren’t up to the task of repelling a determined, joint US-Israel bombardment would be an understatement of almost comical proportions.

Offensively, the IRGC has its missile arsenal which is… well, not nothin’. But they have the same problem as Hezbollah, just on a larger scale: Sure, they might be able to sneak a few, or even more than a few, through, but then what? Even in a “surprise attack” scenario, Iran couldn’t do much, if anything, to degrade the IDF’s counterstrike capabilities. That’s a problem because in the simplest terms, the IRGC wouldn’t survive a counterstrike. Not a real one. Not one where the IDF, backed by US assets in the region, sets about doing some real damage.

Everyone knows all of that. If the question is why, then, does Israel not go after the nuclear sites and blow up Iran’s critical infrastructure, including all the oil, the answer’s twofold.

• First, in that kind of scenario, the regime in Tehran would have absolutely nothing to lose, which means the IRGC would fire everything they had at Israel, probably killing scores of Israeli Jews in the process. Nothing would come of it strategically, but the loss of Jewish lives would compel the IDF to deliver the coup de grâce: They’d kill Khamenei and all the hardliners and then wipe out the IRGC in a night (or day) of massive airstrikes against any and every high-value military and regime target in the country, setting up an insane “day-after” melee inside Iran. The regional consequences of that would be wholly unknowable. Everybody over there on the Sunni side hates Iran on principle, but there’d be more than a little consternation at the prospect of Israel unilaterally overthrowing the theocracy. The blowback would be felt all over the region. The Shiite community would lose its collective mind, and probably set a lot of stuff — cars, buildings, consulates, etc. — on fire. Moscow would be aghast, Beijing would castigate Israel in the harshest imaginable terms, Pyongyang would threaten to nuke something, Hassan Nasrallah would roll in his (freshly-dug) grave, the ghost of Qassem Soleimani would rain down lightning bolts and the Houthis would — I don’t know — sink a tugboat, kick a goat and run around in circles shaking their fists and firing rifles at the sky. “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” to quote Peter Venkman.
• Second, and more important than mass hysteria if you’re Benjamin Netanyahu, the US doesn’t want to get roped into direct, large-scale military action in defense of Israel unless it’s absolutely necessary. Sure, it’d be nice if there were an easy, “clean” way to dispatch with Khamenei, but there isn’t. Regime change in Tehran is something that has to happen — and will happen — eventually, but everyone except Israel hopes against hope that it’ll “work itself out,” which is to say come about organically. Also, there’s the small matter of US personnel stationed in Iraq. If Israel went after the regime in Tehran, the US would probably (where that means certainly) have to reinforce those troops. Because they’d come under immediate attack by Kataib Hezbollah, Al-Nujaba and whatever the rest of the Quds-loyal PMF offshoots are calling themselves these days. And it goes beyond that: Thanks to George W. Bush, Iraq’s an Iranian client state now. If Israel were to kill Khamenei and wipe out the Quds, Iraq could (and probably would) descend into some kind of chaos. And we know what can crawl up out of chaos in Iraq. (Hint: A literal army of darkness, black flags and all.)

So, that’s why Israel doesn’t go “nuclear” — and I suppose I don’t necessarily need the scare quotes, given that you could take “nuclear” figuratively or literally in this context– on Iran.

Again, everyone involved is well apprised, which is what makes these choreographed exchanges between the IDF and the IRGC so asinine. Neither side can take it too far. But when you’re firing missiles at each other, there’s always a chance things get out of hand, which is why Israel needs to “take the win” (as Joe Biden put it earlier this year) and Iran needs to take the offramp (any offramp).

While reiterating the utmost sympathy for the victims of Hamas’s atrocities, Israel should be “tired of winning.” Because who’s left to kill? Khamenei, I guess. But pretty much everyone else is dead. As Netanyahu himself readily acknowledged (he was bragging), the IDF’s now killing subordinates of subordinates within Iran’s network — targeting “replacements of the replacements.” If the Israeli deterrent wasn’t reestablished by September (and in my view it was), it damn sure is by now. The strategic losses suffered by Iran over the past seven weeks — to say nothing of the past seven months — are simply staggering.

To press on now for Netanyahu is just bloodlust and he’s running out of people to bleed. Of course, it’s possible Netanyahu’s just biding his time, hoping that in the event Donald Trump’s reelected, the IDF will get the White House’s blessing to go after Khamenei. According to reports, Trump spoke to Netanyahu at least twice this month. On one of those two occasions, Trump reportedly said, of the IDF’s war conduct, “Do what you have to do.”