According to the book of Kings, the Phoenician monarch Hiram of Tyre was an ally of Kings David and Solomon and provided cedarwood and skilled craftsman for the construction of the First Temple. Outside of the Bible itself, there is little historical information about these 10th-century kings, or evidence of trade with cities like Tyre, in what is now Lebanon. An earring pendant from this era—discovered a decade ago in the ancient Jerusalem neighborhood known as the Ophel, but only recently studied by experts—proves a rare exception. Brent Nagtegaal writes:

The basket pendant’s box is completely solid, measuring 4 x 4 x 2 millimeters. Two tubular parabolic handles, measuring just 0.5 mm in diameter, are attached to the corners of the basket and rise 6 mm above the top of the basket. An even narrower gold wire is tightly wrapped around the base of each parabolic handle, making a knop—perhaps an ancient artistic embellishment to hide the joint of the bars to the base. The top of the parabolic bars are joined together by golden wire wrapped three times around and then extending upward where it is snapped. The wire was probably originally connected to a suspension loop.

I took the artifact to Professor Naama Yahalom-Mack, excavator of the northern Israel site of Abel Beth Maacah and head of the metallurgy lab at the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University, to discover the metal composition of the pendant. She ran three composition tests using the xlr machine, confirming that the pendant was electrum—an alloy of gold and silver. This test confirmed the Ophel basket pendant to be the earliest “gold” artifact ever discovered in an archaeological excavation in Jerusalem to date.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.