In the past several months, the Trump administration has taken a number of measures that make clear that it will no longer turn a blind eye to the misbehavior of the Palestinian leadership, the most recent being the decision to shutter a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington. Elliott Abrams applauds all of these measures but one:

The decision to close the PLO office in Washington was correct. . . . The PLO is not a state with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations, and the PLO has a long history of support for terrorism. Today, PLO funds pay terrorists pensions and rewards in accordance with the seriousness of their crimes and the length of their sentences; that is why Congress passed the Taylor Force Act that requires an end to U.S. funding of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and PLO unless payments for terror stop. . . .

The decision to cut aid levels was correct, given the refusal of the PA to stop its payments to terrorists and its glorification of terror, and given its increasingly authoritarian rule in the West Bank. . . . But [there should be] one exception: Augusta Victoria hospital in eastern Jerusalem, and the East Jerusalem Hospital Network of which it is a part. . . . Defunding [these hospitals] does not harm the PA or PLO, does not punish the Palestinian leadership that is making terrible decisions, and does not help Israel, but does potentially harm Palestinians who have no role in Palestinian politics.

I don’t understand why the administration decided to cut the hospital funding. [But] mistakes can be rectified, and . . . I hope the administration reconsiders and provides the funds.

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.