If true, it would suggest three important things about Tehran’s thinking that take us beyond what we already believed:

1. That the regime believes it is already locked in an undeclared covert war with the United States—perhaps believing that the United States was behind the Stuxnet virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program, as well as the killing of several Iranian nuclear scientists on Iranian soil. Alternatively, the regime may believe that the Israelis were behind those acts, but that the U.S. (and Saudi Arabia) egged them on.

2. That the regime is willing to go way beyond anything it has ever done before to strike blows against the United States in this war. For instance, in the 1990s, the last time the regime (mistakenly) reached a similar conclusion, the most it did was to detonate a truck bomb outside an American military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. The Saudi-American tie was there in this attack as well, but at that time, the Iranians stayed off American soil.

3. That the regime may no longer be concerned about a massive American conventional military retaliation.