Since 2011, the Palestinian Authority’s president has pursued a strategy of “internationalization,” refusing direct talks with Israel and seeking recognition from various international bodies in the hope this will eventually result in official UN recognition of Palestinian independence. Grant Rumley and Adam Rasgon note that despite short-term successes, this course does not seem likely to achieve meaningful results:

[R]aising a Palestinian flag at Turtle Bay or joining the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has hardly changed the facts on the ground for many Palestinians.

For years, every step of the Palestinian international campaign had a contingency plan. After failing to go [for recognition] to the UN Security Council in 2011, the Palestinians went to the UN General Assembly in 2012. After joining several international organizations in 2014, the Palestinians went back to the Security Council. After they failed to win that vote, Abbas signed the Rome Statute and joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). Now, with the ICC failing to yield the type of returns Abbas had hoped for, the Palestinians are largely without a contingency plan. The French conference [held earlier this month] may lead to another summit and ultimately a push at the Security Council, but such a plan is likely only to antagonize Israel and thus amount to little more than another data point in the Palestinians’ failed diplomatic campaign for statehood.

The strategic goal, ostensibly, is to transform favorable international public opinion into a tangible international framework for statehood. . . . Such a [policy] may [seem] the only option available to a drifting Palestinian leadership, but it has so far proved unsuccessful, has alienated them from the Palestinian public, and angered traditional regional allies. In the grand history of the Palestinian national project, such [an approach] . . . may ultimately amount to nothing more than a diplomatic sideshow.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.