Iran's decision to rip off the mask, skip proxies, and attack Israel directly is surprising as it is unsurprising. No one with working brain cells has doubted Iran's desire to attack Israel, exactly as it did, and kill Jews for decades. That's a given. Iran committed acts like this for years via terrorist groups. Escalating the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas to a direct confrontation with Iran, however, is puzzling and raises difficult questions moving forward.

The first bizarre part of Iran's attack was that it was not surprising to anyone involved. On Wednesday, the United States started sending out urgent messages that an attack from Iran was imminent. It seems likely that these warnings were because Iran told the United States it was going to attack Israel. According to Reuters, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq all reported that Iran warned them of an impending attack.

In its reporting of events, the Wall Street Journal said, "this weekend's salvo from Iran, clearly telegraphed in advance, was the opposite of a surprise attack." The moment Iran launched the attack, it was ready with prewritten statements to the UN, "The matter can be deemed concluded ... However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran's response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!"

Iran also had ready-made propaganda pumped through state-owned news outlets and Al-Jazeera. Iran sent out videos of fiery destruction, claiming that Israel was taking heavy destruction. However, multiple Western outlets noted that Iran posted old footage from a fire in Chile.

The reality is that 99% of the threats Iran got into the sky were intercepted or failed to launch. Reports said, "Roughly 50% of the ballistic missiles fired by Iran failed to launch or crashed before reaching their target ... U.S. officials said that Iran launched between 115 and 130 ballistic missiles that targeted Israel." That doesn't count the drones Iran sent, too.

One of the working theories of Iran's actions is that they purposely telegraphed an attack in advance to ensure very little damage happened but still trying to project strength in the Middle East. Essentially, this was a show of force to prove something to the people in Iran and other places without trying to escalate further.

There's a point where you could even say Iran is doing this with the United States' blessing. Given how quickly statements from the White House saying "no escalation" came out, in conjunction with what Iran was saying before all the threats were eliminated, that suggests a level of alignment. It's obvious the White House doesn't want Israel to push further into a war.

But this solution seems too cute by half when you give it even a cursory level of analysis. First, there's Iran's reasoning. Iran claims Israel was behind a strike on its embassy in Syria, which killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi - a senior commander in the Quds force who was also responsible for arming Hezbollah, an Iranian terrorist group.

I have no doubt Iran hates this attack. But it's not the first time Israel has knocked out leadership in Iran or one of its state-sponsored terrorist groups. The United States has even done this under Donald Trump.

Iranian media recently published claims that Zahedi was one of the men responsible for planning the October 7th attacks in Israel by Hamas. Israel wanting to kill him makes all the sense in the world.

With all these previous attacks, Iran has never torn off the mask and launched attacks directly at Israel. They've armed proxies, for sure. But Iran has not escalated to state vs state conflict. Combined with that, there's the scale. Iran launched a massive attack on civilian targets with the express purpose of killing Jews.

Taking that action and then running behind the skirts of the UN declaring, "we consider this finished!" is not where this ends. Israel is well within its right to strike Iran at the heart of what it wants most: nuclear weapons. 

Why would any nation on earth want to live with a petulant Iran with nuclear weapons? They've proven who they truly are between October 7, 2023, and now. Biden's concerns of a "broader conflict erupting" are valid. However, it seems more accurate to say that a broader conflict already exists. Biden lives in a fantasy bubble where we're trying to avoid one.

Israel is fully justified in whatever response it chooses next. Iran admits it pushed October 7, and now it is launching direct attacks on Israel. Israeli fury is fully justified, and they should be allowed to release that anger on Iran with other Arab partner countries. Iran is the one destabilizing the region. Israel and her allies can stabilize things.

Stop treating Iran with kid gloves and using semantics to hide what that barbaric government is. Strike Iran's nuclear capabilities, cripple the economy and crush them. Biden was wrong to give Iran access to billions in aid; that should end, too. The Obama-Biden Iran doctrine is done, and we have the dead bodies and terrorist attacks to prove it.