The two-and-a-half weeks since Israel struck the T-4 air base in Syria, killing seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have evoked analogies to the Hamtana (“Waiting”) period of May 1967 before the Six Day War. This felt like the most dangerous period in Israel’s history. President Lyndon Johnson threatened to abandon Israel if it struck the Arab coalition first. Confidence in the decision-making of then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dropped, forcing him to give up the defense portfolio to Moshe Dayan. To underscore the national zeitgeist of dread, even the pariah Menachem Begin, leader of the right-wing Herut, was invited to join the national unity government. Israel’s agile, fortuitous victories over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria has allowed history to gloss over the anxiety that preceded the six days of achievements on the battlefield.

After the T-4 strike, Israeli decision-makers and the public alike find themselves in another Hamtana-like period of anxiety, waiting for Iranian retaliation. However, difficulties in projecting force across territory, Hezbollah’s preoccupation with the Lebanese elections, and Iran’s domestic constraints raise the costs of a significant retaliation against Israel.