President Clinton signed an executive order in 1994 allowing the PLO, which had until then been designated a terrorist organization, to open offices and operate in the U.S. so long as it continued to abide by conditions laid out in the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority has blatantly and consistently violated these conditions with impunity. Unlike all former secretaries of state, Rex Tillerson has taken action, sending a letter demanding that the PLO close its delegation in Washington. Caroline Glick comments:

The PLO’s campaign, [begun in 2010], to get recognized as a state breached both of its agreements with Israel and the terms under which the U.S. recognized it and permitted it to operate missions on U.S. soil.

The operation of the PLO’s missions in the U.S. was contingent on periodic certification by the secretary of state that the PLO was not engaged in terrorism, including incitement of terrorism, was not encouraging the boycott of Israel, and was not seeking to bypass its bilateral negotiations with Israel in order to achieve either diplomatic recognition or statehood. Under President Obama, the State Department refused to acknowledge the PLO’s breach of all of the conditions for U.S. recognition.

Angry at the administration’s facilitation of PLO breaches, in 2015 Congress mandated stricter and more precise conditions for continued operation of the PLO’s mission in Washington. Starting in 2016, the PLO was explicitly banned from advocating the prosecution of Israelis by the International Criminal Court (ICC). But in 2015 the PLO joined the ICC with the explicit purpose of advocating the prosecution of Israelis. And in conformance with this purpose, in his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2017, the PLO and PA chief Mahmoud Abbas called for the ICC to prosecute Israelis for building communities in Judea and Samaria.

Given his experience with U.S. administrations since Clinton, Abbas had every reason to believe that he would suffer no repercussions for his statement. No U.S. administration had ever called the PLO/PA to account for its open breach of the terms of U.S. recognition. So it isn’t surprising that Abbas and his advisers were utterly shocked [by Tillerson’s letter].

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.