Ask the British Labor-party leader Jeremy Corbyn, or his sympathizers, why he is so fixated on Israel’s supposed misdeeds, and you’ll no doubt hear about his abiding commitment to Palestinians’ human rights. To polish his image as a defender of Muslims, notes Fiyaz Mughal, he scarcely misses an opportunity to be photographed taking part in a Ramadan celebration or other Muslim event. Yet he is a stubborn defender of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who took part in a genocidal campaign to “cleanse” Bosnia of Muslims, and was engaged in similar efforts against the Muslims of Kosovo when the U.S. and its allies intervened. Years later, Corbyn even introduced a motion in parliament praising one John Pilger for writing an article defending Milosevic. (Free registration may be required.)

Over 800,000 Kosovar Muslims were displaced [in 1999]. Kosovar Muslim men, women, and children were murdered in a systematic manner; hundreds of people disappeared, only to be found dumped in shallow graves with gunshot wounds and brutal fresh scars—evidence of torture. [Yet Pilger’s] piece ended with a dismissal of the then-ongoing trial of Milosevic for war crimes as a “farce” and a “show trial” of a man whose only crime was his refusal to “surrender sovereignty” to the demands of global finance organizations. Needless to say, Pilger, together with fellow journalist Seymour Hersh, is also a leading light among apologists [for another mass-murderer of Muslims, Syria’s] Bashar al-Assad.

But give [Corbyn] a photo opportunity at a mosque and he is there looking like the “magic grandpa” of his fans’ online iconography, surrounded by young Muslims who know little about his political history and how little his solidarity with Muslims in danger is really worth.

And then there is Corbyn’s solidarity with Iran, on whose government-run English-language television channel he has made innumerable appearances:

Muslims like me, willing to criticize, challenge, and reflect on some Muslim observances and practices, and opposed to enforced religious observance, would not stand a chance in Iran. We would be arrested, tortured, or killed. So how has Corbyn “challenged” the Iranian regime’s human-rights record and its determined assault on “disobedient” Muslims, even at the cost of their lives? In 2014, . . . Corbyn praised the “tolerance and acceptance of other faiths, traditions, and ethnic groupings in Iran.”

And when Islamic State, another leading killer of Muslims, launched a terror attack on Egyptians in the Sinai, Corbyn naturally blamed the Jewish state. After all, writes Mughal, “all roads in his conspiratorial mindset lead to Israel.”

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.