In his final days in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech outlining the ties between the Islamic Republic and Osama bin Laden’s notorious terrorist group. While conventional wisdom has long maintained that Sunni al-Qaeda would have no truck with Shiite Iran, the truth is that collaboration between the two is old news. By the time Israeli intelligence became aware of it in the mid-1990s, it had been going on for some time. Kyle Orton tells part of the story, which begins with the collapse of Yugoslavia, when Orthodox Serbs launch a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing against their Bosnian Muslim neighbors:

Unmentioned in Pompeo’s speech was one of the crucibles that forged this relationship, and forged al-Qaeda into something more than a regional menace, namely the Bosnian war of 1992-5. Thousands of foreign Sunni jihadists came into Bosnia in this period, many of them either with pre-existing links to al-Qaeda or established links once they were in country, and this rag-tag army of mujahideen found itself benefiting from the role of the Iranian revolution in Bosnia. . . . Iranian veterans of this campaign recently boasted in public about it.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda was receiving extensive support and training from Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hizballah:

The 9/11 Commission Report confirms [a] meeting between bin Laden and [the top Hizballah officer Imad] Mughniyeh in Sudan, probably in early 1992, and the transfer thereafter of al-Qaeda jihadists to the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon for training with Iran/Hizballah.

This relationship continued into the 2000s, when bin Laden, in an internal memo, mentioned that the Islamic Republic allowed his organization’s “core facilitation pipeline” to run through its territory. And just two months ago, a high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorist was assassinated in Tehran.

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.