On April 1, Israel launched an air strike against the Iranian embassy in Damsscus, killing seven high ranking Iranian military officers, including three IRGC-QF generals. Immediately, President Raisi and Ayatollah Khamenei vowed Iran would respond.
They have, with an overwhelming yet ineffective missile strike that allows both sides to claim a win. Will it escalate further? Maybe. All those people - and by this I mean ME state leaders - are nuts. Will it degenerate into all-out war? Meh.
Doubtful.
Meantime, Russia tal'm bout protecting Iran if Israel's allies get involved. Notwithstanding that Israel's allies should stay out of it, Russia can't protect nobody. Their forces are currently stretched out so thinly in Ukraine that when Armenia expected their assistance in punishing Azerbaijan for attacking the ethnic Armenian Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia could offer them...nothing. While they have military presences in Libya and Syria, when ISIS-K blithely and merrily attacked congertgoers at Crocus City Hall in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk - and promised more attacks were coming - Moscow could do nothing about it other than try to blame Ukraine.
Russia cannot even effectively protect Russia at the moment.