Iran and Israel in increasingly dangerous shadow war

The destruction by an Israeli airstrike of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing three Revolutionary Guard generals, was one more step towards what could become an outright war between the two countries. Neither Iran nor Israel wants it because of the potential nightmare scenarios involved. But it's getting closer. Iran wages war by proxy, but no one is in any doubt that Tehran is pulling the strings. The latest violent eruption between Iran and Israel began with a deadly drone strike launched by an Iranian-backed militia force in Iraq which targeted the Israeli naval base in Eilat. It's possible that the intention was to hit an advanced corvette in the port but the drone instead hit a building close by. Had the corvette been hit, the repercussions might have been even more dramatic. The retaliation, whether ordered as a result of the drone strike or preplanned, was devastating enough. The consulate building in the Syrian capital was demolished but the building next door remained unharmed. It was an attack which Israel must have had as a contingency option for some time, but the timing of the strike must surely have been linked to the drone strike. Israel normally takes instant revenge for attacks on its territory, so I would have thought, once the drone strike had taken place, Binyamin Netanyahu chose the consulate option, knowing from intelligence that it was the headquarters of the senior command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, the Iranian organisation responsible for all attacks by the Tehran-backed so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The likelihood is that there will now be more of these long-range drone attacks but Israel will hope that the destruction of the consulate in Damascus might deter the ayatollahs from going too far down the path of all-out war.