Last week, Tehran undermined a Russian-Turkish deal to allow residents of Aleppo to flee the ruins of their city, so that it could use them as leverage in its plans to create a swath of Syria—stretching from Damascus to the Lebanese border—that will be free of Sunnis. Michael Chulov explains:

Aleppo is a crossroads in Iran’s project to build a land corridor to the Mediterranean coast. It is also likely to be a new center of Tehran’s geopolitical projection, which has been on open display elsewhere in the conflict.

Iranian officials have directly negotiated with the opposition militia, Ahrar al-Sham, about the fate of the battered opposition-held town of Zabadani, west of Damascus. Iran proposed a swap of the town’s Sunnis, who would be sent to Idlib province, for the residents of [the Shiite villages of] Fua and Kefraya, [located north of Aleppo], who would in turn be relocated to Zabadani. . . .

In the Damascus suburb of Darayya, where opposition communities surrendered in August and accepted being flown to Idlib, 300 Shiite families from Iraq have moved in. Further to the west, near the Zainab shrine, Iran has bought substantial numbers of properties, and also sponsored the arrival of Shiite families, securing the area as a bridgehead before Zabadani.

Securing corridors of influence with Shiite communities marks, potentially, Iran’s most assertive moment since the Islamic revolution of 1979, after which Tehran’s proxies have gradually projected its influence, through Hizballah, through [its allies in Iraq], and now through the chaos of Syria.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”