In the past few weeks, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives in Gaza have shot at Israeli soldiers, attempted to plant bombs along the border fence, and launched improvised explosives and rockets at Israeli towns and cities. As Yossi Mansharoff explains, PIJ has a long and close relationship with the Islamic Republic, going back to the group’s founder who drew his inspiration from Iran’s theocratic rulers. It is thus no surprise that Islamic Jihad has become Tehran’s main proxy in the Gaza Strip, where its military might is second only to Hamas’s:

Iran began financially assisting [the] organization during the outbreak of the first intifada, if not earlier, and also began to smuggle military equipment to [its operatives] in the West Bank and Gaza. . . . With the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, the organization’s terrorist activity escalated significantly, following a substantial increase in the financial aid provided by Iran. U.S. officials have claimed that Tehran gave PIJ a bonus of millions of dollars for every terrorist attack against Israel. The organization’s leader, Ramadan Shalah, sent his people . . . payments from Iran and instructions regarding the carrying-out of attacks from his headquarters in Damascus.

Despite its attempt to maintain a somewhat independent decision-making process, [today] PIJ is tied to Tehran ideologically, militarily, and financially, so it will find it difficult to deviate from the policy of its Iranian patron. . . . Iran remains PIJ’s only weapons provider and the organization’s sole supporter. [For its part], Iran needs PIJ as a means of maintaining a strategic anchor against Israel, especially in light of its complex relations with Hamas.

While in recent years Israel has been concentrating on preventing Iran’s efforts to establish itself on the northern front, it should at the same time endeavor to curb Iran’s hold on the Gaza Strip. Limiting PIJ’s economic and military capability is a common Israeli and American interest. PIJ was declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States in 1997, following the brutal terrorist attacks it perpetrated against Israel with Iranian support, in which American citizens were also killed, and after senior PIJ officials established themselves on U.S. soil and the organization carried out fundraising activities throughout the U.S. This definition allows for a series of legal measures to be taken, designed to deprive the organization of financial capabilities.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.