Last month, a terrorist attack occurred in the Jordanian city of Karak, leaving fifteen dead. It now seems that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of Islamic State; in the subsequent crackdown, Jordan uncovered a fairly extensive network affiliated with that organization. Yoni ben Menachem writes:

Islamic State sleeper cells could infiltrate Jordan to carry out terror attacks or attack the Jordanian border guard. The two refugee camps on the Syrian-Jordanian border, al-Hadalat and al-Rukban, which harbor 100,000 people, offer a convenient haven and staging ground for attacks against Jordan.. . . .

[In a rare interview,] General Mahmoud Freihat [the chief of staff of the Jordanian military] said that Jordan sometimes communicates with Bashar al-Assad’s regime via “liaison officers,” and that there have been talks on moving the two [refugee] camps several kilometers into Syrian territory. . . . The Jordanian chief of staff sees another danger . . . emanating from Islamic State in the form of the Khaled bin al-Walid Brigades, which has an Islamic State orientation and is operating only one kilometer from the Jordanian-Syrian border. According to General Freihat, the organization is equipped with tanks and heavy weapons. . . .

Jordan has long been supplying light weapons to the Bedouin tribes in southern Syria so that they can form a buffer zone and fight Islamic State forces and other jihadist organizations. Jordan is now signaling to Syria that it is prepared to cooperate with it in the war on Islamic State despite its disapproval of Syria’s close ties with Iran.

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.