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‘Diminishing returns’<\/p>\n
The Jerusalem Post’s military correspondent, Yonah Jeremy Bob, hit the nail on the head when he wrote about \u201cdiminishing returns.\u201d\u00a0In the early days of a campaign, each strike accomplishes several things at once: It kills a commander, disrupts logistics, and shakes confidence. Later, the targets get thinner, and the gains become narrower. Bob\u2019s warning was sharper still. Decisions about extending a war, he argued, should rest on \u201chard-nosed data and analysis,\u201d not \u201cspeculation and hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
That line should be printed and taped to walls in military bases and government offices on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
The conservative instinct on Iran has often been correct. The Islamic Republic\u2019s brutal regime funds terror, crushes dissent, and has spent decades building the architecture to threaten Israel\u2019s existence. The case for hitting it hard was serious. The damage inflicted is real.<\/p>\n
But a serious strategy requires more than satisfaction at having drawn blood. Air power can buy time, degrade capacity, and restore deterrence. However, it cannot manufacture a clean ending simply because the opening phase went well.<\/p>\n
So, the question now is, what does each additional day of war still buy?<\/p>\n
This is where the public conversation loses its footing. Some people treat any talk of restraint as weakness. Others treat continued strikes as recklessness. Neither camp is especially useful.<\/p>\n
The real questions are more specific and harder. Are further strikes likely to push back Iran\u2019s<\/a> missile threat in a measurable way? Are there still targets whose destruction would materially change the strategic map? Or has the curve already started bending downward?<\/p>\n Israelis understand this at a frequency most foreign observers don\u2019t reach. Here, wars proceed as follows: the sirens<\/a> at 2 a.m., the mad dash to the safe room, the children pretending not to be scared, and schools stumbling through another week of disrupted schedules. Israel is a country of resilience, but it is accruing steady exhaustion.<\/p>\n The compounding costs<\/p>\n These costs compound quietly. A war with clear, achievable goals can be sustained and explained. A war whose logic has drifted into hope becomes very hard to defend to the person standing in their safe room at midnight, wanting it to end.<\/p>\n