Reportedly acting on a tip from the Mossad, Belgian police discovered and arrested a married Iranian couple in Antwerp who had a powerful bomb in their car. The same day, German police arrested Assadollah Assadi, a member of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Vienna, who had provided the bomb and ordered the couple to use it to attack a rally being held by an Iranian opposition group in the French town of Villepinte—an event that prominent American political figures were expected to attend. Struan Stevenson comments:

Despite clear evidence that Iranian embassies in Europe are now used as terrorist bomb factories, EU lawmakers on July 5 nevertheless approved plans for the European Investment Bank to do business with the theocratic regime in Iran in a desperate bid to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive. The EU appeasers seem to think that if you keep throwing steaks to the tiger it will become a vegetarian.

Opponents of the regime inside Iran are regularly imprisoned, tortured, and hanged, often in public. An estimated 100,000 political prisoners have been murdered since the ayatollahs seized control of Iran in 1979. Outside the country, the mullahs’ preferred option is assassination or terrorist attacks. They have trained Ministry of Intelligence and Security agents implanted in every European embassy. Their job is to track down and eliminate political dissidents or enemies of the fundamentalist regime. . . .

Although the Iranian terrorist plot was foiled on the eve of a visit to Austria by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and his foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Austrian president went ahead with the meeting in a sickening act of appeasement. In a blind panic over President Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran is desperately trying to bully and cajole the EU into making up any shortfall caused by renewed sanctions, and Europe seems tragically happy to comply. . . .

Europe needs to wake up. Iranian embassies should immediately be closed across the EU and their diplomatic staff expelled. The days of kowtowing to this medieval and murderous regime are over. Europe must show that we support the Iranian people in their ongoing uprising and their bid to end the tyranny that they have suffered for four decades. But for the vigilance of the Belgian Security and Intelligence Service and the Belgian and German police, dozens of innocent people would have been maimed and killed in Villepinte. Murderous attempts of this magnitude can no longer be ignored.

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.