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.

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.