While the tit-for-tat exchange between Israel and Iran has fundamentally altered strategic calculations about regional security, it is just starting to dawn on the world how much more dangerous the situation would be if both sides possessed nuclear weapons.

The massacre at a public event in Moscow last week, which killed at least 140 people, was one of the largest terrorist attacks in recent years, coming just a few weeks after another mass-fatality attack in Iran at the tomb of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.

During yet another of his incessant trips to Beirut, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian declared last week: “War is not the solution, and we absolutely never sought to expand it.”

Amid the fog of the Gaza conflict, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency warn that Iran has increased threefold its enrichment of uranium to near bomb grade.