Hester Stanhope (1776-1806), who came from a wealthy, aristocratic British family, served early in her life as a chief-of-staff of sorts to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. She then left England for the Middle East, where she was the first to convince the Ottoman rulers to allow archaeological excavation in the land of Israel. Shirly Seidler writes (free registration required):

Stanhope was an adventurer who often scandalized people, but always got her way. In the early 19th century, she did everything women weren’t supposed to do: roamed the Middle East by herself, wore male clothing, rode astride rather than sidesaddle, and smoked pipes with sheikhs. She was called the queen of the desert. And even though she didn’t find the treasure she sought, she was an archaeological pioneer. . . .

[Stanhope] reached Lebanon . . . in 1812. There, she visited the Mar Elias monastery near Sidon, where the monks showed her an Italian scroll that told of a great treasure buried in Ashkelon in Palestine. Stanhope promptly decided to hunt for the treasure.

When she asked . . . for a permit to dig in Ashkelon, [the Ottoman authorities] initially refused, because that was an era when Western archaeologists routinely stole antiquities for Western museums. But after Stanhope promised to give them the treasure if she found it, the Ottoman authorities grew enthusiastic and ordered the governors of Damascus, Acre, and Jaffa to assist her.

“You have to understand that there was no archaeology in the land of Israel until the 1920s,” explains [the historian Gad] Sobol. “But suddenly, along comes a woman dressed like a man, riding a horse, who enters Damascus and gets what she wants. . . . After Lady Stanhope, the Ottomans no longer feared archaeologists.”

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.