I don't think so. Open war with Iran means flattening of Israeli cities. It means severe disruption to Israeli life. We all witnessed what those homemade Palestinian rockets did to Israeli infrastructure and daily life. Now imagine Iranian Ballistic Missile warheads slamming into occupied territories at a speed of Mach 4-5. The terror and shock it will cause is just too great to comprehend. And i am only talking about BM's being launched directly from Iranian territory towards occupied Palestine let alone daily Hezbollahi, Qods force assault on Israel. Israelis know fully well the cost of open warfare hence their preference for the never-ending shadow war.
It is not only Israel that is afraid of the cost but also other powers such as the US and the UK. You can see their helplessness in the recent attack on the Israeli ship.. apart from issuing statements, imposing sanctions etc. they never dare to openly confront Iran. Their ''revenge'' will be through the shadow war as usual.
IMO, Islamic Republic under Khamenei will not back down. So the shadow war will continue until the Supreme leader dies. We still do not know who his replacement is and even known he will never have the same courage and determination as the current supreme leader in confronting Israel.
I partly agree with you. Despite a decade of threats, we have not seen Israel airforce come to Iran, we have never seen a strike on Iranian soil. It appears indeed, they are worried about the consequences. I am confident with Bavars-373 and S-300PMUs in Tehran (not to mention other equipment), any of their pilots that try to operate near this city will be buried. They can only strike once with their tankers as well, by the time the Israeli pilots return with their tankers to Ben Gurion, it should already be brimming with smoke and fire. It will be difficult for them to sustain sorties from such far distances.
That being said, we cannot keep these sanctions on Iran forever, it simply won't do, if the west does not like Iranian demands, then we have no choice but to up enrichment to 90%. I wish we had gone the Pakistan route, but we are way to late. Their program started before the revolution even started.
Going to 90% opens a whole host of new scenarios, in which case the Americans who are too afraid to park their fleet inside the Persian gulf will have to be involved. That's when things get complicated. We'd need atleast 10,000 ballistic missiles to fight them both.
The British bastards who are good for causing famines in Iran and Pakistan, don't even dare react to the death of their citizen, if this was 50 years ago, they'd bomb us just for that. Now look at them...
I for one, hope that Iran secretly has those 5 50kt warheads that was originally planned.