In recent years, Israel has expanded its economic and diplomatic ties with various countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—links that could conceivably offset potential damage from an increasingly hostile Europe and a less-than-wholly-supportive U.S. Has Jerusalem, then, deliberately shaped business ties in support of its diplomatic initiatives? Yitzhak Klein and Elisheva Berenbaum argue that in fact the distribution of Israel’s foreign trade has remained relatively static:

That Israel is making efforts to create closer economic relations with new partners is indisputable. But creating such opportunities is not the same thing as manipulating trade relations to reduce exposure to potentially problematic trading partners while increasing trade with diplomatically more congenial ones. . . .

Israel’s economic performance over the past decade and a half has been a solid if not a stellar success, better than most developed economies’ records. This success is one of Israel’s most important diplomatic assets: Israel’s economy is stable, growing, and features brilliant technical achievements based on its comparative advantage—a highly educated and innovative workforce. Israel is a major beneficiary of the open global economy, and its trade is determined by domestic demand and production, not by the government picking winners, whether for economic or diplomatic purposes.

The actions of other governments may, of course, force Israel to change this pattern. So far, however, the lack of Israeli diplomacy’s influence on its trade has made a quieter, more consistent, and more substantial contribution to the country’s success than any diplomatic photo opportunity.

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.