Matti Friedman reminisces about Shlomo Mousaieff, who died last week at the age of ninety-two:

Shlomo Moussaieff . . . will be remembered as a purveyor of jewels to the rich and famous and as one of the world’s foremost collectors of biblical antiquities. I will remember him as one of the most enigmatic and fascinating people I have ever interviewed.

The Herzliya hotel suite where Moussaieff spent much of his time was an Ali Baba’s cave: Canaanite oil lamps, Babylonian curse bowls on the coffee table, a pair of bronze lions with ivory eyes. Behind an unremarkable poster leaning against a wall was an inscribed tablet that came, he said, from the land of Sheba. . . .

Moussaieff was born in 1923 to an important Jerusalem family with roots in the Central Asian city of Bukhara. He was one of twelve children. A dyslexic and a failure in school, he incurred the wrath of his father and ran away from home as a teenager, living on the streets for a time. The persona he acquired then stayed with him: he was a multimillionaire who lived in the toniest part of London, but he put on no airs. He was a merchant, a street-brawler, and a Jew. He seemed proud of all three. . . .

By his own count, his collection included 60,000 pieces. His goal, he said, was to amass physical evidence proving the accuracy of the biblical narrative, and he disdained scholars and archaeologists whose work undermined that idea.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.