On Monday, Avi Gabbay—a former telecommunications executive—won the race to be the new head of Israel’s Labor party, meaning that he would be prime minister in the event of an electoral victory for his party. A relative newcomer to politics, Gabbay only recently joined Labor, after spending a few years in the center-right Kulanu party and briefly serving as Benjamin Netanyahu’s environmental-protection minister. Michael Koplow explains the significance of Gabbay’s election:

For starters, Gabbay is Mizraḥi, born to Moroccan immigrant parents. . . . Until Menachem Begin’s 1977 victory, Israel was essentially a one-party state, and that party represented the Ashkenazi, socialist, secular, Labor Zionist elite. Begin’s election did many things, including ushering in four decades of right-wing dominance, but one of the most critical was empowering Mizraḥi Jews and giving them a voice. Begin was not himself Mizraḥi, but he openly represented a Mizraḥi constituency. . . .

Gabbay is not the first Mizraḥi Labor leader, but [if] the polling is accurate, he is going to siphon off votes from Likud, in no small part due to his background.

Gabbay also represents a break from Labor’s ideological past. . . . He is known for advocating populist economic policies during his brief time in politics, but he is decidedly not from the old Labor economic tradition. This too creates the potential for Labor to expand its pool of supporters, and to demonstrate that it understands the way in which it must craft economic policies that relate to the new economy. . . .

Israel is a center-right country, and the key to Labor returning to a position of power isn’t boosting its traditional turnout but [expanding] its base of support. Gabbay has the potential to capture new non-traditional Labor voters, and that is what makes his victory tantalizing to those who want to see Labor challenge Likud. . . . [None of this means] that he will be the next prime minister, or ever the prime minister. It does, however, mean that Labor may see itself back in a center-left coalition before too long.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.