How can Israel retaliate — but not escalate?

Israeli officials have concluded that to deter Iran, they should retaliate for this weekend’s massive missile barrage, according to knowledgeable sources. But as the Israelis study lists of potential targets, they are looking for ways to deliver this hard-nosed message without escalating the crisis.

“The story is not over,” said a senior Israeli source. “Iran took this massive action to create new rules” by bombarding Israel directly as payback for its April 1 strike on Iranian operatives in Damascus, Syria. “If we do nothing, it will strengthen this line of thinking in Iran,” the senior Israeli said, stressing: “We do not seek to escalate this. We want to contain it. But we cannot let it pass.”

Israeli officials were bolstered by what a senior Biden administration official described as their “spectacular” success in shooting down more than 300 Iranian munitions over the weekend, with help from their partners. And they’re gratified by the newfound international support they received in this crisis.

But “strong defense is not enough,” the senior Israeli source insisted.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued to Americans that to survive in the Middle East, Israel needs very strong deterrence — and that defense isn’t necessarily enough to deter Iran. Gallant, who has emerged as an increasingly important voice in the “war cabinet,” has been in frequent contact with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other top U.S. officials.

For the Biden administration, Israel’s determination to take another step up the ladder will probably be a disappointment. Officials had hoped that neutering Iran’s missile attack would be a sufficient show of strength and that a period of de-escalation in the broader Gaza conflict might follow. “Slow things down, think through things,” President Biden advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the defeat of Iran’s attack.

But like other American appeals to de-escalate, this one appears to have been rejected by Israeli leaders. They see their adversaries as having crossed previous “red lines” in their willingness to slaughter Israelis — in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack and then in Iran’s weekend bombardment, which U.S. and Israeli officials believe was intended to cause significant damage and loss of life.

Israeli officials also reject Iran’s pretext for the attack — that in striking Quds Force commanders in Damascus, it hit a diplomatic facility that was, in effect, part of Iran’s sovereign territory. Israelis contend that the facility they struck, though it might have had an Iranian flag outside, hadn’t officially been designated a diplomatic compound.

Iranian arguments about the sanctity of diplomatic facilities are also unconvincing from a regime that condoned, and celebrates to this day, the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran — and has allowed more recent attacks on British and other diplomatic facilities there.

As Israeli officials weigh their response to Iran’s missile attack, they are confronting the perennial dilemma of deterrence: How can a country demonstrate its willingness to use force — and dominate the cycle of escalation — without creating precisely the crisis it seeks to avert? Israel’s tough-minded approach to this question has deterred some conflicts, but it has arguably created some others.

For generations, Israeli leaders have insisted that their unyielding position is essential for survival in a brutal and unforgiving Middle East. You can question, as some U.S. officials do, whether this logic has truly been successful for Israel. But the mood Monday night was a reminder that whatever outsiders might think is best, Israel will make its own decisions about security.