The American branch of the Qatar-sponsored news network has experienced a series of setbacks, including a spate of firings, a lawsuit by a disgruntled former employee, and allegations of endemic workplace sexism and (unsurprisingly) anti-Semitism. Oren Kessler and David A. Weinberg write about the network’s larger problem:

Al Jazeera Arabic—the flagship of the Al Jazeera conglomerate—has long served as a mouthpiece for Qatar’s Islamist-driven regional agenda. During last summer’s Gaza war, the channel’s coverage seemed taken from Hamas’s own playbook (an unsurprising fact given Qatari support for the terrorist group), describing all Palestinian casualties, whether civilians or militants, as “martyrs.” Similarly, an article from February about last year’s slaughter of worshippers with a gun and a meat cleaver in a Jerusalem synagogue described the killers as “martyrs.”

Al Jazeera is by far the most-watched channel in the Arab world, and Al Jazeera English (the network’s English-language channel for everywhere but America) is available in 140 countries, including every European market.

But the network has never quite found a market in America. It ranked a dismal 104 out of 106 among ad-supported cable channels and, in the first quarter of 2015, averaged only 35,000 viewers. . . . Americans, it seems, simply aren’t buying what Al Jazeera is selling.

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.