Roxana Saberi felt like she was back behind bars in Tehran. As she watched Israel’s bombing of Evin prison, the notorious detention facility at the core of Iran’s political repression, she shuddered at memories of solitary confinement, relentless interrogation, fabricated espionage charges and a sham trial during her 100-day incarceration in 2009.

"The volume of attacks appears to be relatively low," said Nicole Fishbein, a senior security researcher with the Israeli company Intezer. "The techniques used are not particularly sophisticated." Online vigilante groups alleged by security analysts to be acting at Iran’s direction boasted of hacking a series of Israeli and Western companies in the wake of the airstrikes.

Israel has become more militarily dominant in the Middle East than at any time in its history. But its success has also laid the groundwork for future risks.