Pakistan has routinely targeted various terrorist groups operating within its borders, but its overall strategy, argues Bill Reggio in recent congressional testimony, is to support several other jihadist organizations both at home and in Afghanistan. Among the most prominent of these is Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, and its ally Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT):

LeT operates openly inside Pakistan and has offices throughout the country. . . .[Its] headquarters, [located] near Lahore, is a sprawling complex that is used to indoctrinate future jihadists before they are sent off for military training. . . .

[LeT’s] terrorist infrastructure was used to conduct . . . terrorist attacks in India and Afghanistan. The most prominent attack took place in Mumbai, when a suicide assault team fanned out across the city and targeted multiple locations, including a theater, a train station, hotels, and a Jewish center, killing 164 people. The attack lasted for three days.

Indian intelligence traced phone calls back to handlers in Pakistan as the assault was ongoing. The handlers directed its fighters to execute non-Muslims, often brutally, and laughed when their instructions were carried out. After the attack, Interpol issued arrest warrants for two serving senior Pakistani army officers and a retired major.

Despite LeT’s overt ties to al-Qaeda and its campaign of terror in India and Afghanistan, the Pakistani government refuses to crack down on this group.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.