SO MUCH FOR IRANIAN MODERATES.

Last week, dear reader, we saw an essay by one Eldar Mamedov of the Quincy Institute, which turns out to be a talking shop for Obama foreign policy types, only they're no longer loading pallets of cash onto transports or pulling security at consulates in Benghazi, who suggested that Ali Larijani might have been one of those Iranian moderates whose existence, forty years ago, gave the sort of people who would be right at home in the Quincy Institute, opportunity to marinate in a smug of their own making mocking the very concept of an Iranian moderate.

So let it be with Ali Larijani.  In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Amit Segal asserts "Israel Once Again Decapitates the Serpent."

For nearly a year, Larijani has headed the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s highest security body. Israel promoted him again last month, eliminating most of his superiors and leaving him as the highest-ranking security official still standing. Since that day, he had been viewed as one of, if not the most powerful man in the regime left alive.

As head of the SNSC, he sat at the center of Iran’s war effort. After Israel beheaded the regime’s leadership, he was one of the few remaining figures capable of convening the emergency council—one he may not have participated in directly, but over which he almost certainly wielded significant influence. He was also likely among the shadowy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders standing behind the maimed Mojtaba Khamenei, pulling the strings of the new Supreme Leader.

Larijani unwisely tempted Israel.

Next man up.

It might be, as Mr Mamedov asserts and Mr Segal suggests, that Mr Larijani was restraining the local missileers from cobbling together long-range ballistic missiles out of satellite boosters or from flipping rockets with cluster warheads in the general direction of the Temple Mount.

Iran is trying to escalate by targeting more symbolic sites in Israel—perhaps the Knesset or the Western Wall. Whether this is a show of confidence or an act of desperation is an open question.

There is another possibility: Iran is expanding its core strategy—chaos. I doubt the remaining ayatollahs would welcome the collapse of the Dome of the Rock, but if it happened, they would likely expect the blame to fall on Israel—helped along, of course, by their own denials of responsibility. Iran has fired on nearly every country in the Persian Gulf, not because it believes it can dominate the region, but because disorder and confusion may buy it room to breathe.

Or it might be, as Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball, these days doing foreign affairs for American Greatness suggests, that there were no strings left for Mr Larijani or anybody else left to pull.

Iran’s military movements now resemble the movements of a frog’s legs during dissection. The legs may twitch, but the frog isn’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel continue to search for and destroy weapons storage and manufacturing facilities and anything having to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

The loss of an "Iranian moderate" who still holds the machinery of repression in hand might, suggests Rick Moran for Pajamas Media, lead to sufficient degradation of the mullahs' authority for a popular uprising to turf them out.  "Iranian leaders are terrified; their military can do little except expend more precious missiles in a futile quest to inflict damage on U.S. allies. Meanwhile, the attacks on the Basij, the police, the auxiliaries, and the Revolutionary Guards continue to systematically destroy Iran's ability to enforce their will on the populace."

There are a number of United States forces on the move, and the Israelis continue their work on the mullahs' machinery of repression, and the upcoming weekend could be eventful.