Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of an attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September, which the year before had carried out the notorious Munich Olympics massacre. At an embassy reception, the terrorists took ten hostages, including four children, and eventually killed the two Americans in the group, along with a Belgian diplomat. Alberto M. Fernandez comments:

We now know, of course, that Black September was a subsidiary of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah organization. The attack was carried out with the full approval and knowledge of Arafat from his headquarters in Beirut. Both the killings and the hit team’s surrender were coordinated with Arafat. The Sudanese government of Jaafar al-Nimeiry, initially furious about the attack, handed the gunmen over to the PLO for punishment; [that is], it handed them over to the organization that had carried out the attack. Sudan was reportedly pressured towards leniency by Gaddafi’s Libya, a great patron of the Palestinians at the time and a major influence on Sudan.

The immediate aftermath of this terror attack is kind of a snapshot, a scene caught in amber of the region half a century ago. You have Black September, forged in the wake of the PLO’s failure to overthrow the Hashemite [dynasty] in Jordan. You have Arafat sending the team out from his safe haven in Beirut, capital of a Lebanon the PLO would help destabilize and destroy. You have the enabling of Palestinian terror by Gaddafi and Anwar Sadat, both of whom would come to a bad end. Finally, you have a Sudan at the mercy of others, fearing Gaddafi and punished by the Americans.

Fifty years later much has changed in the region. The greatest patron of Palestinian terror is no Arab state, but Iran (with both Erdoğan’s Turkey and Qatar playing supporting roles). The violence is less in foreign countries and diplomatic missions and closer to home. Last year was the bloodiest year on the West Bank since the second Palestinian intifada and 2023 does not look much better. Thirty Israelis and 167 Palestinians were killed in 2022 with anger running high on both sides.

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.