We both know that declarations of war are generally uncool these days, especially when you have an opponent that one is more restrained by legalities and appearances of their side of the fight than your own.
Which is why Iran won't declare war, and neither will Israel. But that has little to do with what each will do in practical rather than legal terms.
It did some actual damage. Very little, but that's more telling of Israel's missile defenses (only few ballistic missiles got through out of hundreds of munitions) than Iranian intent.
If they fired some handful of cruise missiles, or only shaheds, i could believe the theory that it was meant to do no damage, but as it is, it was a pretty serious test for Israeli defenses.
They passed pretty well, but it's war, shit can happen.
If Iran cared about doing no damage, it would have to consider such scenarios as Israelis fucking up some part of their missile defense for any reason at all that neither they nor Israelis would know of beforehand, and then such random or other side based surprises ruining the whole plan.
Judging by scale and type of attack, this was indistinguishable from a pretty good try at doing damage, they would struggle to make a much better one, and it would cost them a lot to do it.
Which is why Israel seems to opt for retaliation, and we both know it won't be a "no damage done" kind of retaliation in their case.
Israelis call Iran the world community's greatest enemy - Israel's next moves scenarios - Biden calls for Biden to avoid escalation
en.protothema.gr
And then there's also the part where shit did in fact happen on their side, which puts a rather poor shade on the supposed IRAN STRONK message:
www.jpost.com
www.atlanticcouncil.org
