News broke last week that Gonen Segey, a former Knesset member and minister of energy and infrastructure, had been arrested in Israel on charges of spying for Iran. Segev, who had previously served a prison term for drug smuggling, fraud, and forgery, has been out of office since 1996. Eran Lerman tries to make sense of this turn of events:

If [Iranian intelligence] did, in fact, see Segev as an asset worth cultivating, it raises questions as to the value of the information he supplied and the priority given to the information Iranian intelligence was tasked with obtaining. We can already say with certainty that this was not information about plans by the Israeli government that would deter Iran. For some time now, Segev has not had access to that kind of information, and his conviction for drug dealing has kept him at a distance from power players. . . .

[T]he Iranians—seeking to destroy Israel—are mainly interested in identifying targets to attack, especially major ones. The former energy minister is an asset who can produce a lot in this area, as someone who was responsible for sensitive infrastructure systems.

It is hard to say how much damage has been done and it will be discovered only through a detailed investigation. But even if we are satisfied with what we already know, we can understand plenty about Iran and its goals and the limits of the Iranian intelligence community’s capabilities. If this is the best they could do, Israel’s proven intelligence superiority is in no danger.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”