In 2019, Google announced that its quantum computer solved a problem in 200 seconds that would have taken a classical computer 10,000 years to solve. Now, the Israeli government is planning to build its own quantum computer, a project with far-reaching implications. David Isaac reports:

In response to what industry observers call the second quantum revolution, Israel announced on February 15 an ambitious goal of building its first quantum computer within a year.

The first quantum revolution led to inventions like the transistor, the laser, and the atomic clock, which [make possible] today’s information technology. The second is about controlling particles that show quantum effects, like photons and electrons. Although real-world applications are 10-to-30 years off, Israel, which punches above its weight in tech, doesn’t want to be left behind.

Moshe Goldstein, associate professor in the school of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University, explained that “Israel is a relative latecomer. We’re definitely not the first. . . . But everyone else in the world is not that ahead, so we still have a chance of catching up.”

Goldstein says that while Israel has announced an investment of 200 million shekels—or $62 million—that’s a fraction of what other governments have invested. China leads the world with $10 billion for quantum research. Germany dedicated $3.1 billion and France $2.2 billion. The United States in 2018 set aside $1.2 billion.

Yesterday, the head of the Shin Bet—Israel’s internal security service—was in Washington meeting with officials from the State Department, CIA, and the White House itself. Among the topics no doubt discussed are rising tensions with Iran and the possibility that the latter, in order to defend its nuclear program, will instruct its network of proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq and Yemen to attack the Jewish state. Oved Lobel explores the history of this network, which, he argues, predates Iran’s Islamic Revolution—when Shiite radicals in Lebanon coordinated with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s movement in Iran:

An inextricably linked Iran-Syria-Palestinian axis has actually been in existence since the early 1970s, with Lebanon the geographical fulcrum of the relationship and Damascus serving as the primary operational headquarters. Lebanon, from the 1980s until 2005, was under the direct military control of Syria, which itself slowly transformed from an ally to a client of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nexus among Damascus, Beirut, and the Palestinian territories should therefore always have been viewed as one front, both geographically and operationally. It’s clear that the multifront-war strategy was already in operation during the first intifada years, from 1987 to 1993.

[An] Iranian-organized conference in 1991, the first of many, . . . established the “Damascus 10”—an alliance of ten Palestinian factions that rejected any peace process with Israel. According to the former Hamas spokesperson and senior official Ibrahim Ghosheh, he spoke to then-Hizballah Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi at the conference and coordinated Hizballah attacks from Lebanon in support of the intifada. Further important meetings between Hamas and the Iranian regime were held in 1999 and 2000, while the IRGC constantly met with its agents in Damascus to encourage coordinated attacks on Israel.

For some reason, Hizballah’s guerilla war against Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s was, and often still is, viewed as a separate phenomenon from the first intifada, when they were in fact two fronts in the same battle.

Israel opted for a perilous unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, which Hamas’s Ghosheh asserts was a “direct factor” in precipitating the start of the second intifada later that same year.