At the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, met with a group of expatriate Pakistanis. After knowledge of the meeting became public, there was a storm of outrage in Pakistan, and a journalist was fired by the government-sponsored broadcasting company for visiting the Jewish state. There is little reason, however, that Islamabad and Jerusalem should not have diplomatic relations. Ameena Tanvir writes:

As countries in the Gulf have started normalizing their relationships with Israel, Pakistan has the chance to revisit its own policy. Recognition from countries like Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco—and Saudi Arabia’s expansion of secretive talks with Israel—could provide more impetus for Islamabad to present its case of Israeli recognition to a skeptical domestic audience.

In the long-term, if Pakistan becomes more isolated in its position on Israel, [this isolation] could also alter its historically warm ties with Gulf states . . . like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As important economic partners, and home for many in Pakistan’s diaspora and migrant-worker population, these countries have more leverage to push Pakistan towards recognition.

Through extending recognition, Pakistan can also benefit from Israel’s state-of-the-art military hardware, such as attack helicopters, which Pakistan needs for its counterterrorism operations in Baluchistan and its northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan. Because of the U.S.’s reluctance to sell military hardware to Pakistan and the inferior quality of Chinese defense equipment, Islamabad has been looking for new defense partners to maintain rough conventional parity with India. Israel, as a growing defense exporter, could fulfill some of Pakistan’s defense requirements.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.