Yesterday, a mere 35 minutes before the deadline, Yair Lapid—the leader of Israel’s Yesh Atid party—announced that he had succeeded in forming a governing coalition, cobbled together from parties across the political spectrum. Most notably, the eight-party coalition includes Ra’am, which will be the first Arab party ever to join an Israeli government. Yet nothing is certain, as a single defector could collapse the entire arrangement, and it could take up to twelve days before the Knesset formally approves it.

The Western press is already celebrating the new coalition as a major loss for the Israeli right, since it spells the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister. But in fact, the new government will include three decidedly right-wing parties. Lahav Harkov explains how this situation came to be:

The past decade is littered with political obituaries announcing Benjamin Netanyahu’s imminent departure from office—and each has ended up looking more absurd than the last. Here in Israel, predictions of his downfall have become a fixture of daily political life.

But even a political genius can make mistakes, and it looks like Netanyahu is about to get his comeuppance on one of his most enduring flaws: his cultivation of protégés whom he then discards, fearing that they might one day challenge him. For years, it seemed like this was just politics; Netanyahu didn’t want to promote someone only for that person to take him down, so he pre-emptively saw off any potential competitors.

Little did he know that there could one day be consequences. Israeli politicians are currently involved in coalition negotiations after another inconclusive parliamentary election. There are, of course, a number of reasons for Netanyahu’s inability to form a government in three of the past four elections. But the most important has been the right’s majority in the Knesset after each one, and [his former allies’] refusal to be part of a coalition led by Netanyahu.

And the leaders of the three main right-wing parties who have declined to be in Netanyahu’s coalition all have one thing in common: they all used to work closely with him—until they were no longer useful.

These three leaders include Naftali Bennett, who, if the new coalition is approved, will serve as prime minister for two years, followed by Lapid.

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.