A week ago, the Egyptian president was being received warmly in Washington, where Donald Trump hosted him in the Oval Office and praised him publicly. But President Sisi obtained little of substance, and the recent American attack on Syria, Eric Trager writes, is a rejection of Sisi’s advice:

Sisi returned home on Thursday empty-handed and overshadowed as President Trump heeded the views of Jordan’s King Abdullah [with whom he met on Wednesday] on Syria and ordered strikes . . . despite Sisi’s misgivings.

To be sure, Sisi’s visit was all about receiving—and showcasing—the big Beltway hug. For the past four years, Cairo sulked as the Obama administration held the autocratic Sisi at arm’s length. . . . But the goodwill tour didn’t yield any immediate goods. Sisi received no new military or economic aid, nor did the Trump administration renew the financing mechanism that allows Egypt to order expensive weapons systems on credit.

Meanwhile, ministers in Sisi’s entourage pressed the American business community for more investments, but returned home without any new contracts. And despite Cairo’s persistent lobbying for Washington to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the Trump administration took no such action.

Cairo, by contrast, responded coolly, expressing its “great concern” and urging the U.S. and Russia to cooperate in resolving the Syrian crisis. Egypt’s hedge isn’t surprising, of course: Sisi has deepened his country’s relationship with Russia in recent years through weapons purchases and joint military exercises, and he therefore can’t endorse an American attack on the Russian-backed Syrian regime. If tensions between the U.S. and Russia worsen over Syria, Sisi’s White House visit this past week might be the high point of his “new beginning” with Washington.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.