I’ll preface this with the obvious point that it has only been a few days since the attack on Israel and our understanding of event could and probably will change weeks or months from now as we learn more.

That said, the information we have at the moment, described as “good evidence” by one of the sources, suggests that Iran was surprised by the attack. Of course no one is surprised in a general sense by Hamas attacking Israel. That’s why Hamas exists. But Iran was apparently surprised by this specific attack, meaning they may not have been involved in the planning or timing of it.

And that matters because it suggests this attack wasn’t part of some Iranian masterstroke. Iran will still celebrate it of course and they’ll try to gain whatever advantage they can out of it. But if you’re looking for a strategic explanation for why this attack is happening now, the Iranians probably can’t tell us that because it appears it wasn’t their plan.

Earlier this week, I asked this question directly: What was the goal here? The best answer I could come up with at the time came from an opinion piece published in Saudi Arabia.

In a column, Tariq Alhomayed,the newspaper’s former editor, criticized Hamas and Palestinian factions for waging what he called a “useless war.”

He accused them of trying to sabotage the prospects for Saudi-Israeli normalization — and of serving their Iranian backers at the expense of the Palestinian people.

“Iran does not want to see real peace, or specifically Saudi-Israeli peace,” he wrote. “Because if it happens, it will be the peace that will change the face of the region.”

That made a certain amount of sense. It created a larger regional strategy behind the attack. It relies on the idea, which most people probably assumed at the time, that Iran planned this, that they set it in motion for some specific reason. But if in fact Iran wasn’t part of the planning, if they really were surprised by it, then this explanation doesn’t work. We’re forced to ask a different question: What was Hamas plan/goal here?

Today, Graeme Wood has a piece in the Atlantic trying to answer that. Like the rest of us, he has been looking at unfolding events trying to piece together the plan.

Hours after Hamas broke through the Gaza barrier, I asked whether we were witnessing Step One of a plan that would perhaps involve Hezbollah and a front in the north—and even further moves that would threaten to break Israeli defenses altogether. Israel rapidly reinforced its northern border to prevent that, and according to reports, Hezbollah was warned that any shenanigans would be answered with the leveling of Damascus. Such phased escalations would have had their most devastating effect if they came when Israel was at its most confused and traumatized, and before it mobilized its reserves. Now that its reservists are in place, escalation seems unlikely to happen, at least not in the coordinated strategic way that could cause Israel’s collapse…

What is Israel to make of an enemy that launches an attack like this, and does not have an immediate Step Two? The more details that come out about what happened this weekend, the more it seems that the simple answer could be correct. In that way Hamas’s operation resembles 9/11 even more than the sneak attack that began the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the days after 9/11, Americans waited in fear for a Step Two that never came. It took years to realize that al-Qaeda didn’t have a sophisticated strategy at all, which is one reason its central terror networks have been obliterated…

Step One was to infiltrate Israel and commit crimes against humanity. Step Two—well, it’s not clear what Step Two is, and even Step One is looking half-baked. Terrorists gonna terrorize.

As many as 1,500 of Hamas’ best fighters are dead and the plan for their still breathing compatriots is to hide behind Gazan civilians and Israeli hostages. These people are vicious and ruthless but not that bright. They probably didn’t put much actual thought into what would happen next and that is going to cost them. It’s going to cost all of Gaza really because Israel can no longer tolerate Hamas’ existence. There isn’t going to be a ceasefire this week or this month. Israel is going to occupy Gaza and attempt to kill as many of the estimated 30,000 Hamas fighters as it can. All of this was foreseeable to anyone who spent a few moments thinking about it but it’s not clear that Hamas did that.

The stupidity of Hamas is worth thinking about because there are lots of people online these days (many of them on the right) who see every world event in terms of “psyops” and master plans to control the world population. I’ve already seen some of them trying to explain how this attack was planned to replace the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, which people were tired of already. It’s an outlook whose central theme is paranoia about the powerful forces orchestrating every event.

This “master plan of the global elites” lens on world affairs couldn’t be further from reality in many cases. So far, this attack appears to be the work of bloodthirsty barbarians who hatched a plan to kill as many Jews as possible without any clear thought about what came next. Again, there are some pretty evil people in Iran who will be doing their best to turn this to their advantage. They are no doubt making plans after the fact, but that shouldn’t lead us to overestimate the intelligence of Hamas. The kind of people who volunteer to die in a mass murder spree against innocent civilians aren’t often deep strategic thinkers.