Two years ago Sunday, Sudan became the third Arab state to normalize ties with Israel in the framework of the Abraham Accords. The second-largest country in Africa by area, Sudan recently rid itself of a brutal Islamist despotism and is moving unsteadily toward realignment with the West. Alberto M. Fernandez—in conversation with Robert Nicholson—delves into the country’s history, explains its current complexities, and discusses its relationship with Israel. In his view, the religious rhetoric connected to the Abraham Accords, and embedded in their name, is a necessary counterweight to the Islamic rhetoric that for decades has been used to delegitimize the Jewish state. He also addresses how peace with Israel can militate against authoritarianism’s hold on the Middle East. (Audio, 69 minutes.)

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].