Last week, the lower house of the Irish parliament passed a bill making it a crime to do business with Israelis living in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Clifford May comments:

You should know—as perhaps some Irish parliamentarians do not—that the Golan Heights came under Israeli control after Syrian attacks in the Six-Day War of 1967. No one who identifies as a Palestinian lived there then or lives there now. The implication that Israel should hand over the Golan—and the Druze population [that has lived there for centuries]—to Syria’s mass-murdering dictator Bashar al-Assad is ludicrous. . . .

Irish parliamentarians might want to play out the hand they are attempting to deal. Israel withdraws from the West Bank. Hamas takes over from Fatah. Missiles are launched at nearby Tel Aviv. Israelis defend themselves. Bloody battles take lives on both sides. Over time, the West Bank resembles Gaza—or Syria. Is this really the result Ireland wants to facilitate?

There is a chance that the legislation passed by the Irish parliament will fail to become law—though if so, probably not because the arguments I’ve made above have resonated. Ireland has attracted some of America’s largest companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They pay lots of taxes and provide lots of jobs. Obeying the Irish law would likely mean violating existing U.S. federal law that prohibits American firms from participating in foreign boycotts not endorsed by Washington. More than two-dozen state laws also penalize firms that engage in such boycotts.

The United States in 2017 accounted for two-thirds of all foreign direct investment in Ireland. So, in the end, this law could have a greater impact on Ireland’s economy than on anything happening in the Middle East.

Critics of the American bombing raid on Iran have warned that it could lead to dangerous retaliation, and risk dragging the U.S. into a broader conflict. (How this could be a greater risk than allowing the murderous fanatics who govern Iran to have nuclear weapons is a separate question.) Yesterday, Iran indeed retaliated. Noah Rothman writes:

On Monday, Iranian state media released a high-production-value video revealing [the government’s] intention to strike U.S. forces inside neighboring Qatar. A bombastic statement from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council accompanying the video claimed that Iran had launched a salvo of ten missiles at the U.S.-manned Al Udeid Air Base, which “pulverized” American forces. In reality, the missiles seem to have all been intercepted before they reached their targets. No casualties have been reported.

In fact, the Iranians quietly gave Qatar—the Gulf state with which they have the best relations—advance warning of the attack, knowing that the Qataris would then pass it on to the U.S. Thus prepared, American forces were able to minimize the damage. Rothman continues:

So far, Iran’s retaliatory response to U.S. strikes on its nuclear program looks a lot like its reaction to the 2020 attack that killed the Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Suleimani—which is to say that it seems like Tehran is seeking an offramp to avoid a potentially existential conflict with the United States.

Now, it’s important to note that this is only a face-saving climb-down if that’s how we want to interpret it. The only reason why we remember the Iranian operation aimed at avenging Soleimani’s death as a cease-fire overture is because we decided to take it that way. We didn’t have to do that. One-hundred-and-ten U.S. service personnel were treated for injuries as a result of that direct and unprecedented ballistic-missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq. . . . The U.S. could have regarded that strike as an unacceptable precedent, but the Trump administration had made its point. By simply deeming deterrence to have been restored, the U.S. helped bring that condition about.

It appears that is precisely what the U.S. has done this time. Last night both Washington and Tehran announced a cease-fire, one that includes Israel. Whether it will hold remains to be seen; Iran already managed to get in a deadly, eleventh-hour attack on civilians in Beersheba. If Jerusalem knew such an arrangement was in the cards—and there is every reason to think it did—then its military activities over the past few days start to make a great deal of sense.

Since June 13, there has been some lack of clarity about whether Israel’s goal is to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities, or to destabilize the regime. Now it seems that the IDF has been doing precisely what it has done in the final phase of almost every prior war: try to inflict as much damage as possible upon the enemy’s military infrastructure before the U.S. blows the whistle and declares the war over—thus reestablishing deterrence and leaving its enemy’s offensive capabilities severely weakened.

In the next item, I’ll turn to some of the nonmilitary targets Israel chose.