While former Obama administration officials have argued that the September 14 attacks on Saudi oil installations reflect the failure of the renewed economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Michael Mandelbaum argues that the opposite is true:

[T]he attack shows that the [Trump administration’s] policy is succeeding. Its objective is to put pressure on the mullahs, making it more difficult for them to carry out their policies of repression at home and aggression abroad. The fact that the Iranian regime has lashed out as it did, running the risk of severe American reprisals, is evidence that it is, indeed, feeling serious pressure. With economic sanctions reinstated, Iran is unable to sell oil, its only source of income, complicating its efforts to preserve itself in power while seeking to dominate the Middle East.

This is only one of the misconceptions about America’s Iran policy that Mandelbaum goes on to dismantle. But if the standard criticisms of the Trump administration’s approach are weak, that approach itself is not without flaws of its own:

[I]f the United States is unwilling to use force against Iran under any circumstances—and the Obama administration gave the impression that this was its policy—then the mullahs, who have no scruples about killing others or even having Iranians die in large numbers in pursuit of their goals, will ultimately get what they want.

Fortunately, one American ally is fighting back [against Iran], and successfully so. Israel, the destruction of which is a major and longstanding aim of the rulers in Tehran, has, through the use of airpower, thwarted the Iranian attempt to build and deploy accurate missiles in Syria that it could use, in conjunction with the comparable forces it has installed in Lebanon through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hizballah, to overwhelm Israeli air-defense systems. Israel’s policy demonstrates that Iranian aggression can be checked, and at acceptable cost, without putting American troops on the ground and exposing them to attacks, as in Afghanistan and Iran.

What, then, should the United States do in response to the recent act of aggression? . . . It is not in the American interest for the conflict to escalate sharply, but failing to make any military response risks encouraging the mullahs to mount further, larger attacks, which could lead to a full-scale Middle Eastern war. One possible course of action is to do to Iran what Iran did to Saudi Arabia by conducting a limited aerial attack on Iranian oil facilities.

Such an attack would signal to the mullahs, and the world, that the United States will match Iranian attacks but not go beyond them. It would send the message that America will respond to provocations but will not be the party to start a wider war.

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.