Although Islamic State (IS) is rapidly losing territory in both Syria and Iraq, Michael Rubin warns that victory is not necessarily at hand:

There will be no formal surrender. Nor will the eventual defeat of IS necessarily delegitimize its apocalyptic theology.

The theological problem is this: the late Turki al-Bin’ali, the grand mufti of Islamic State, cited a hadith [extra-Quranic teaching], attributed to Muhammad, declaring that there would be twelve true and legitimate caliphs before the end of the world. He counted [the current IS caliph Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi as the eighth, giving ambitious or megalomaniacal upstarts theological cover to be number nine, ten, or eleven. This creates a win-win situation for those who wish to emulate IS. Success proves theological legitimacy but failure doesn’t count because its authors can be dismissed, in hindsight, as imposters.

Beyond the very real possibility of a long-term insurgency in territory formerly held by the caliphate, Rubin predicts IS will continue to pose a threat as an international, underground terror network, and stresses the “the dual necessity of shutting down Islamic State activists’ cyber access and blocking the return of IS veterans to Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere.”

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.