The Muslim Brotherhood—the parent organization of Hamas—is sending a delegation to Washington to lobby against the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In January, State Department officials met with a similar delegation; Eric Trager argues that the White House should not allow this to happen again:

While the delegation will likely draw interest from the media and think-tank communities, the Obama administration should not engage with it at any level. Given the Brotherhood’s explicit embrace of violence and calls for Sisi’s death, U.S. engagement with the Brotherhood at this time will undermine the administration’s efforts to strengthen relations with Cairo. It will also undercut the administration’s attempts at encouraging the Sisi government toward greater political openness. . . .

[T]he administration is correct in its analysis that the Sisi government’s crackdown on opposition activists and media, as well as the restrictive environment for non-governmental organizations, may once again catalyze a destabilizing political explosion, as in January 2011 and June 2013. By meeting with the Brotherhood, however, the Obama administration will damage its credibility for influencing Egypt in this direction, since the Sisi government and its many supporters will interpret these calls for openness as enabling the Brotherhood’s return to politics—a prospect that the regime and its supporters view as suicidal.

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.