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.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.