While the idea of Israel teaming up with Arab allies to confront an expansionist power east of the Euphrates might sounds like something drawn from today’s headlines, it is in fact what is described on an ancient Assyrian monumental inscription, the Kurkh Stela, about the exploits of King Ashurnasirpal II, who reigned in the 9th century BCE. Ariel David writes:

[The text] relates the king’s conquests in the first six years of his reign, ending with the great battle he fought at Qarqar against an international coalition whose members and forces are listed in painstaking detail. Leading the coalition were three figures: Hadadezer, the Aramean king of Damascus; Irhuleni of Hamath (modern-day Hama in Syria), a neo-Hittite kingdom whose territory included Qarqar; and a ruler named by the Akkadian-language inscription as “Ahabbu Sirilayu.”

Scholars today overwhelmingly translate these words as “Ahab the Israelite,” and identify him as the biblical monarch of the northern kingdom of Israel. “The chronology is right, it’s exactly the right time, we don’t know of another king named Ahab or another kingdom named Israel, so who else could it be?” says Nadav Na’aman, an Assyriologist and emeritus professor hof Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.

Even more surprisingly, among the junior partners of the coalition, Shalmaneser’s scribe goes on to list a “Gindibu Arbayu”—that is, “Gindibu the Arab.”

[Peter Machinist, another Assyriologist], notes that the Bible gels well with the Kurkh Stele in depicting the kingdom of Israel as a major regional power in the time of Ahab and his father, King Omri. Even as it condemns these rulers for supposedly following idolatrous practices, it acknowledges Israel’s primacy over neighboring Judah [and] Moab, and its strong ties with other nearby kingdoms. (Ahab’s wife, the much-maligned Jezebel, is said to be a daughter of the king of the powerful Phoenician city-state of Tyre).

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.