An attack like this is military - which could be carried out by terrorists or a govt.
The difference is important.
> Would it be acceptable for Iran to assassinate Israeli nuclear scientists in Israel?
Acceptable? No. Terrorism? Also no.
A military attack is a thing you know. Not everything is terrorism.
Anti-terrorism conventions define terrorism as explicitly including unlawful killings with the intent to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
I am doubtful that Iranian agents doing these same actions to scientists in the US or Israel on the street would be considered a legitimate military action and not terrorism.
What are you talking about "facility"? The human, named Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was a military target, since he was the head of the nuclear weapons program in Iran.
I'm unclear what the relevance of "many civilians around". Do you imagine military targets are always isolated with never any civilians near them?
> I am doubtful that Iranian agents doing these same actions to scientists in the US or Israel on the street would be considered a legitimate military action and not terrorism.
A scientist in the US or Israel working on developing a nuclear weapon would be a military target. Why does this surprise you?
There's a reason you don't know the names of any scientists in the US or Israel working on nuclear weapons: They would instantly become targets.
Do you imagine war is some kind of game where everyone is like "it's my turn now", and there's a referee?
This is in contrast to the MO of most of Europe and even the United States.
Iran funds and supports groups who have declared, and continue to make war on Israel as a proxy for themselves doing it. They are happy to expend every single one of their proxy armies and munitions if they can avoid the direct consequences of action.
The groups that Iran supports carry out assassinations. Kidnappings. Mass murder. Direct attacks on non-combatant populations, aka war crimes. They cyber attack where they can. They physically attack where they can get their cannon fodder to do the wet work.
So, what's your point? That Israel is "evil" for demonstrating dangerous teeth behind its deterrence?
There's a game siblings sometimes play. One hits another. The injured party responds in kind. The first, the aggressor, calls their parents and complains that the second hit the first and was the aggressor. The second is then punished by the parent for aggression.
This has been the rhetorical, and effectively actual history of the conflicts since prior to the founding of Israel. Iran was a "friend" until they ... changed direction ... in 1979.
Israel is defending itself, actively, against existential threats. If the act of defending itself and its people causes you to label it as evil, that's your business.
Iran is not defending itself against existential threats. It is actively on the offense along multiple fronts. Its activities directly and indirectly cause death of non-combatants. That is, IMO, a very basic and simple definition of evil. This isn't defense. This is offense. For the express purpose of achieving the goals they have enthusiastically repeated for decades.
If you don't think that is evil, that is your business as well.
If you find yourself arguing against the entity that is the victim of the aggressor entity, I think you have some deep internal reflecting to do. Because such a position, is advocating against defending against actual attacks. Which the aggressor entity has done, in the open, through proxies, as well as in secret. Israel is not the aggressor entity.
If this is what you support, or cannot bring yourself to accept, and insist that this is "narrative" ...
Again, best thing to do is lots of internal reflection.