Last week, the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte—known for his bloody war on his country’s drug traffickers and drug addicts as well as his outrageous statements encouraging violence and even seeming to praise Hitler—made a state visit to Israel, where he was warmly received by Benjamin Netanyahu. Easy as it is to criticize the prime minister for cultivating relations with such unpleasant characters, writes Daniel Gordis, the truth is that he has a sound strategic rationale for doing so:

Duterte had reasons for wanting to visit Israel. Tens of thousands of Filipinos are employed in Israel, many of them as caretakers for Israel’s elderly. So common is the phenomenon that the term filipinit has come to mean female caregiver regardless of the caregiver’s country of origin. Sentences such as “my mother’s filipinit is from Sri Lanka” are common. . . . Duterte promised to meet with some of these foreign workers and to discuss their conditions of employment. But he was obviously much more interested in purchasing Israeli arms. . . .

Duterte is but one of several strongmen to whom Netanyahu has reached out of late. The prime minister has met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, to name but a few. Duterte is thus merely the latest in a string of seemingly strange relationships.

Netanyahu is hardly oblivious of the critique these visits have engendered, but he is also a master strategist. One of his key priorities is to ensure that Israel is not alone in the international arena. In the United Nations General Assembly, the Philippines (like Azerbaijan) has the same vote as do Germany or France. Smaller countries are also more likely to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s pressure to move their embassies to Jerusalem (though Paraguay’s agreement to do so backfired on him this week).

Israelis may grimace at Duterte’s presence in Israel, but they are all-too-accustomed to feeling internationally isolated. They take comfort in their prime minister building bridges to countries around the globe. [That’s one reason that], under Netanyahu, Israelis simply feel safer.

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.