Iran is increasingly striking a militant tone following Saturday’s painful retaliatory strikes by Israel. Yet are the mullahs using harsh rhetoric now to make it easier to then climb down and lure America into a diplomatic rabbit hole, while they dash to become a nuclear state? 

Initially, officials of the Islamic Republic attempted to downplay the results of Israel’s Saturday operation. Yet, as its results are increasingly visible, including to Iranians themselves, the tone at Tehran is sharpening. 

The Israeli air force struck at dawn with more than 100 aircraft that flew 1,200 miles away from Israel’s borders. The three-wave retaliatory attack obliterated many of Iran’s Russian-made S-300 air defense batteries, demolished ballistic missiles and drones and their manufacturing capabilities, and hit a secret site where Iran once experimented with nuclear weaponization.

“The consequences of the Israeli aggression on our territory will be bitter,” the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Salami, said Monday. Iran will “give an appropriate response,” echoed President Pezeshkian. A retaliation is “definite,” the parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, added. 

Such statements “increase the Iranian commitment to respond,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University, Raz Zimmt, writes on X. He adds, for now Tehran seems intent on delaying a decision on the timing and scope, “possibly until after the American presidential elections.”

Israel, meanwhile, is signaling that its attack Saturday — the first overt military strike on Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1998 — might be only an initial salvo. At the opening of the Knesset’s winter session on Monday, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed critics who say he is all tactics, no strategy.

“Our long-term strategy,” Mr. Netanyahu said, “is to dismantle the axis of evil, to cut off its arms in the south and in the north” and “to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I have not given up, and we will not give up on achieving that central goal.” 

The premier added that “for obvious reasons” he could not share details — and hinted that if necessary Israel would act alone. “We’re in a continuous dialogue with our American friends,” he told the Knesset. “Yet crucial decisions on our security, including the choice of goals and objectives, will be made by us.”

Israel, however, is likely to await the November 5 election. Iran, too, might delay its response. “The question the Iranians have is not only what options do they have” but also “how would it impact the American elections,” the Quincy institute’s Trita Parsi, who often reflects Tehran’s positions, told a podcast, “Democracy Now!”

One option Tehran might be considering is to forgo a retaliation altogether, and lure the next American president into protracted diplomacy that could help Iran become a nuclear power. “If the Iranians play it right, they can say, look, we didn’t respond, and therefore, let’s make a deal,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, tells the Sun.   

With a repeated, if unsuccessful “don’t” message, the Biden administration indeed seems to be clinging to the hope of a diplomatic path out of the Mideast wars. “Do not respond,” Vice President Harris told CBS News Sunday, adding it would be a “mistake” for Iran to further escalate. “We are working through diplomatic channels, and other channels, to ensure that there is a de-escalation in the region.”

President Trump’s running mate, Senator Vance, is also saying that America should use “smart diplomacy” to prevent escalation. “Israel has the right to defend itself,” he told podcaster Tim Dillon, but he added that America’s interest “is in not going to war with Iran.”

Israelis suspect that the mullahs might use the post-election period to make a dash toward completing its nuclear weaponization program. Once Israel removed much of Iran’s air defenses on Saturday, though, Israel might be able to go after nuclear targets next. Indeed, it might have already started.

Among the Israeli Air Force targets on Saturday were several buildings at a military installation at Parchin. In the past, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were barred from entering parts of that compound, where suspected activity related to nuclear weaponization had taken place. 

It is unclear whether Iran has since removed incriminating evidence, but some equipment might have remained at Parchin, according to the Washington-based Institute of Science and International Security. If so, Israel “may have destroyed valuable equipment useful in further nuclear weapons development,” the think tank, known as “the good ISIS,” writes on its X account.  

Perhaps it was merely meant as a message to Iran that its crown jewels are vulnerable. After Saturday’s attack at dawn, though, Mr. Netanyahu seems to have inched ever closer to achieving the “central goal” of his career: ending the threat of a nuclear Islamic Republic.