Over the past year, the current war in the Middle East has been marked by something akin to what ecologists term “shifting baseline syndrome”: while a full-scale regional conflagration has mercifully been avoided, each escalation has entered dangerous new territory. Dramatic events like the trading of direct blows between Iran and Israel, once thought almost unthinkable, are becoming routine. At the same time, each individual strike is carefully calibrated to sidestep the abyss.

Israel’s delayed retaliatory strike on Iran this weekend fits this pattern perfectly. Just as Iran’s missile barrage on Israel limited itself to a handful of precise military targets, so did Israel’s response. It was a significantly more moderate response than Israel’s previously bellicose rhetoric had suggested. Israel’s strikes seem to have focused on Iranian ballistic missile and drone production facilities. As RUSI’s Director of Military Sciences Matthew Savile observed on X, “the strikes look designed to emphasise Israeli conventional superiority and warn Iran of future vulnerability if it tries to retaliate, but they have avoided anything that looks sensitive: no indications of nuclear or senior regime targets hit, nor energy/oil targets.”

Early fears of an oil price spike should Israel hit Iranian oil facilities have now dissipated, no doubt to the Harris campaign’s relief in the US. Indeed, as the Economist’s Anshel Pfeffer notes, a “Major knock-on effect of Israeli strikes on Iran is that Iran won’t be able to supply Russia with new ballistic missiles for many months until it rebuilds its manufacturing capabilities”. This turns a potential headache for the US into an unexpected boon when it comes to the parallel Ukraine conflict, where Iranian missile and drone technology has acted as a major Russian force enhancer.