“An important battle just played out in Canada at the intersection of geopolitical territorial disputes and international trade law,” writes Eugene Kontorovich. At issue was the labeling of Israeli products made in the West Bank. Earlier this month, the Canadian government summarily reversed a decision by one of its agencies that wine produced in the West Bank could no longer be given the “Made in Israel” label. To Kontorovich, this is a good opportunity for the United States to reexamine its own Customs policy, which calls for such products to be labeled “Made in the West Bank”:

The notion that “Made in Israel” labels in such a context are misleading has been rejected in recent years by the UK Supreme Court and French appellate courts. . . . Quite simply, such labels are not understood by consumers as making any statement about the importing state’s view of sovereignty in a disputed territory. The UK court noted that it would be impossible to show that the typical consumer relies on such an assumption to his or her material detriment.

That is why the European Union imports products from occupied Western Sahara labeled “Made in Morocco” despite not regarding it as Moroccan sovereign territory, as well as allowing “Made in Palestine” and “Made in Taiwan” labels on consumer goods despite not recognizing even the existence of those countries. Indeed, bottles from occupied Nagorno-Karabakh are imported into Canada and Europe with labels describing them as “Armenian” products or even products of “Artsakh,” the Armenian name for the region that the international community regards as occupied Azerbaijani territory.

In short, no one thinks the typical consumer relies on food labels to determine sovereignty issues.

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.