President Obama, John Kerry, and a number of left-wing pundits have been in the habit of pronouncing Islamic State (IS) “not Islamic.” Now, in the rush to downplay the connection between the massacre in Orlando and radical Islam, some commentators have invoked the perpetrator’s impiety as reason to doubt his connection to IS in the first place. Abe Greenwald spots the contradiction:

If IS isn’t a true representation of Islam, and if Omar Mateen wasn’t a particularly devout Muslim, wouldn’t that make him—by progressives’ own logic—an exemplary IS terrorist?

Apparently not. As it turns out, Islamist terrorism is for confused Muslims only until a confused Muslim commits mass murder in the name of Islam. When that happens, Islamist terrorism turns out to be for the serious and devout, after all. . . .

What’s the benefit of deceiving on the matter of radical Islam? The answer is, it allows us to avoid our responsibilities and tell soothing stories while the world burns.

If we called things by their proper names, maybe we wouldn’t have spent the week after a terrorist attack straining and contorting in a national effort to deny the obvious. [What’s more], there’s dignity in facing the truth. Frankly, that’s benefit enough.

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.