During his visit to Saudi Arabia, President Trump stressed that Washington and Riyadh can join together in fighting Islamic State, Iran, and other violent Islamist entities. David Andrew Weinberg urges the U.S. to pressure the Saudi government to do its part by changing the tenor of its textbooks, which are used in the kingdom and exported to over a dozen other Muslim countries:

Until 2015, the Saudi curriculum was so austere that Islamic State was reportedly using the kingdom’s textbooks at schools in territory it had conquered. . . . Saudi textbooks for the current academic year call for the slaughter of people who engage in a range of non-violent acts considered immoral by Saudi religious authorities. This includes adultery, gay sex, disavowing or mocking Islam, and even “sorcery.” . . .

A current high-school textbook . . . claims that the goal of Zionism is world domination, namely a “global Jewish government to control the entire world.” It singles out Zionism among all other self-determination movements as inherently racist and expansionist, somehow even blaming it for spreading drugs and sexually-transmitted diseases in the Islamic world. . . . [Another] declares that “Christianity in its current state is an invalid, perverted religion” whose promoters seek to impose its dominion over Muslim nations through “intellectual invasion.” . . .

Washington has leverage [regarding these textbooks]. Saudi Arabia is so eager to patch up its frayed alliance with the U.S. that the king’s son recently went so far as to vouch for the president’s “deep respect” for Islam and endorse his immigration policies. . . . Trump should point out that in 2006 the kingdom assured the U.S. that it would remove all remaining passages from the books that promote hatred or disparage other religions by 2008. . . .

It would also be fair to ask Riyadh to take other crucial steps against extremist indoctrination, such as to stop granting broadcast licenses to Salafist television channels that air hateful messages abroad and to stop granting government privileges to preachers who propagate intolerance.

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.