Israel braces for Tehran's response after deadly Damascus strike

I'm hard pressed to understand what Israel wanted out of this. Were the targets that valuable?

That's not impossible, especially if they were involved in the October 7 attack. Iran is a major source of funding and weapons to Hamas, and they've been using Hamas to attack Israel by proxy for decades.

Even so... going after such people in a third country is going to invite reprisals that will be widely seen as justified. I don't expect them to care much what most of the world thinks, but they do require American support. They're risking a lot by this, and by their own rationale they'd better be getting something very serious for it.

These actions signify that this particular state is behaving more like an overgrown military outpost rather than a rational nation-state.