In the CIA’s early years, the agency’s Middle East policy focused on opposing both Communism and Zionism. The main architect of this policy was Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore), who, like many of the CIA’s founding figures, belonged to “a fading patrician class of American Protestants—with deep ties to elite universities like Harvard and Yale, and to missionaries with connections throughout the Middle East.” Asaf Romirowsky explains the strategy, and its latter-day legacy:

In 1948, Roosevelt and leading anti-Zionist Virginia Gildersleeve, a former dean of Barnard College, had formed the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land, which warned that “extreme Zionist pressure” was in “danger of disruption of our national unity and encouraging anti-Semitism.” The group worked in close coordination with the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, and with State Department officials. Roosevelt kept forming [other] anti-Israel groups, such as 1949’s Holy Land Christian Committee, ostensibly to assist Christians in Israel. . . .

[This history] helps explain how modern NGOs’ evergreen anti-Zionist views remain cornerstones today, along with the convenient core belief that all Middle East problems reside in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Characterizing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Zionist groups as the center of a nefarious “Israel lobby” is also not new.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.