Apologists for Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani continue to devise elaborate arguments that he is in fact a “pragmatist” who is bringing reforms to his country and holding the “hardliners” in check. Sohrab Ahmari explains that he is nothing of the kind:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has now been in office for more than four years. Yet he hasn’t fulfilled any of the major domestic-reform pledges that got him elected in 2013 and re-elected earlier this year. Those pledges won him the decisive backing of urban, secular-minded, middle-class Iranians—and plaudits in the West. . . . Rouhani’s ballot-box triumph, [in short], was enough to give the regime a smiling, reasonable visage, and to reduce rising discontent, but not enough to effect any meaningful change. . . . .

The Rouhani-as-reluctant-hardliner theory, [proffered by those of his defenders who argue that he compromises now to secure reform later], is belied by the man’s long record in the Islamic Republic. Try as they might, Rouhani’s apologists can’t elide the fact that he served as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005, years during which Iran conducted a campaign of assassinations and “chain murders” targeting dissidents at home and abroad. Nor can revisionism undo Rouhani’s leading role in the crackdown against the 1999 student uprising, when he called on the regime’s security forces to “crush mercilessly and monumentally any move by these opportunist elements wherever it may occur.” Nor, finally, can the apologists ignore Rouhani’s years-long refusal to speak out for the detained leaders of the Green Movement, [which campaigned for broad political reforms in 2009].

What does all this mean for the West? It means that the U.S. and its allies must finally come to terms with the Islamic Republic as it really is, rather than as they would wish it to be. Nearly four decades since its founding, the regime is much more ideologically cohesive and united than the appearance of factional wrangling among its elites would suggest. There are no liberal-minded, pro-Western friends on the inside. Too bad that in Washington, and more so in Brussels, reformist hope springs eternal.

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.