In 1969, the Central Intelligence Agency decided it should cultivate a relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—then designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.—with the goal of wooing Yasir Arafat away from the Soviets. Arafat, writes Sean Durns, played along:

To facilitate this relationship, Arafat relied on Ali Hassan Salameh, the head of Force 17, his personal security force and counterintelligence unit. . . . A flamboyant womanizer, [Salameh] wore leather jackets, drank alcohol, and practiced karate. His father, Hassan Salameh, had been a famous Palestinian terrorist who took part in, among other acts, a failed Nazi plot to poison Tel Aviv’s water supply during World War II. . . . The CIA told Salameh that he “has friends in high places and so does his cause.”

Salameh even admitted to his handler, Robert Ames, that he had recruited a Paris theater-owner who had sent agents to blow up a hotel in Israel.

Neither this information, nor the PLO’s murder of two American diplomats in Khartoum in February 1973, dissuaded the CIA from maintaining the relationship. In fact, terrorism seemed to have had the opposite effect: in November of the same year, the Agency formalized its relationship with the PLO and, in 1976, then-CIA director George H.W. Bush invited Salameh to visit headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

During his January 1977 visit to Langley, a CIA operations officer named Alan Wolfe gave Salameh—whom Israelis held responsible for helping plan the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre in which eleven Israeli athletes were held hostage, tortured, and murdered—a leather shoulder holster for his gun. Perhaps most incredibly, at his request, the CIA subsequently took Salameh and his wife to Disneyland for their honeymoon, accompanying him on the rides and paying for the trip.

Salameh’s initial CIA contact, Robert Ames, would be murdered, along with 62 others, in an April 18, 1983 suicide car bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The attack was carried out by Shiite jihadists and reportedly planned by Imad Mughniyeh, formerly an operative of Salameh’s Force 17.

As for Salameh himself, the Mossad assassinated him in 1979. Another CIA officer sent his son a condolence letter.

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.”