As Israel bombs the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’s deadly attacks against Israel over the weekend, attention has turned to retaliation against Iran—especially since the Palestinian militant group let it be known that it received support from Iran for the attacks and Israel’s president directly blamed the country.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas,” while the BBC has received confirmation of Iran’s involvement from Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad. As Danielle Pletka wrote over the weekend in Foreign Policy, some of the Iranian strategic advice and backing has been in plain sight for more than a year. If the Iran-backed Hezbollah decides to join the hostilities, Israeli retaliation against Iran would be even more likely.

But punishing Iran is not the slam dunk it may seem. For the past few years, the Islamic Republic’s military has increasingly been harassing international vessels in the Strait of Hormuz —which lies between Iran and Oman—and it can quickly ramp up those activities. That would spell trouble for the world, because 30 percent of all oil travels through the strait.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy