The death under mysterious circumstances of Alberto Nisman, on the day before he was scheduled to testify to the Argentinian congress about Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, says much about how the West has responded to the threat of global jihad. Seth Lipsky writes (free registration required):

[W]hile the bombers were plotting their attack, top American intelligence officials . . . were meeting with a delegation of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It was . . . a wide-ranging session, touching on all parts of the world. The one area on which “a crackle of disagreement erupted” was on Islamic terrorism.

The disagreement was between “analysts on the intelligence side,” who discounted the notion that we were facing a “unified Islamic threat,” to use the jargon of the time, and several skeptics in the Jewish delegation, including Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Malcolm Hoenlein of the Presidents Conference. One of the intelligence types . . . summed up his view by saying “We do not want to replace the struggle against the red tide of Communism with a struggle against the green tide of Islam.”

Many terrorist attacks later, has the U.S. learned its lesson? Not to judge by recent behavior:

Where was U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when the long fight to bring Iran to book on AMIA was coming to a head? Where was the Obama administration? Where are they now? They are pursuing their effort to make America a contract partner with the regime that Nisman accused of being the culprit in the AMIA bombing. What a sorry end to this story that would be.

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.