In 2011, Israel released a large number of captured terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier being held hostage by Hamas. Around the same time, Hamas closed its offices in Syria due to tensions with the regime in Damascus. Turkey thus became an increasingly important base of operations for the terrorist group, as Nadav Shragai explains:

Besides hosting Hamas offices and senior officials who planned terror attacks, Turkey has also become a safe haven for Hamas’s financial affairs, including the funding of terror organizations in the West Bank. In a report published by the U.S. Treasury Department on September 10, 2019, the United States announced that it had “designated fifteen leaders, individuals, and entities affiliated with terror groups.” . . . The report revealed that Hamas operatives and collaborators in Turkey engage in fundraising, transferring money to the military wing in Gaza, funding terror organizations in the West Bank, and running money-changing and fund-transferring companies in Turkey through which terror funds are laundered.

The information published by the Treasury Department shows that the main source of financial support to Hamas via Turkey (and sometimes via Lebanon) is Iran.

After a half-decade of ups and downs in Israel-Turkey relations, a further attempt at reconciliation is now on the agenda. This time the initiative comes from the Turkish side. According to assessments, Turkey is trying to break out of the international isolation that has befallen it, improve its standing with the Biden administration, and ameliorate the difficult economic situation within Turkey.

Turkey’s courtship of Israel in an attempt to repair relations gives Israel a golden opportunity to act effectively against Turkey-Hamas collaboration.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.