At a July 8 meeting of the UN Security Council, Russia vetoed a proposal for sending humanitarian aid to the beleaguered people of Syria—despite months of negotiations aimed at achieving a different result. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the UN, roundly condemned the Kremlin’s behavior, but, David Adesnik argues, Washington should have done more to prevent this predictable outcome:

Moscow did not have the support of a single other member of the Security Council—twelve backed the American position and China abstained. But still, Washington folded. Why?

The Biden administration made the critical error of negotiating without leverage. It should have built up the U.S. and allied capability to deliver aid without help from UN agencies so a Russian veto would not shut down the aid pipeline. Instead, the administration let Moscow turn millions of Syrians into hostages—the only choices available to the United States and its allies were to accept Russian demands or let civilians starve.

Moscow provided ample warning that it would pursue this ruthless strategy, but the White House did not rethink its game plan. The Russians have worked for years to choke off the supply of aid to any part of Syria outside of Assad’s control. The last enclave still receiving assistance is in the northwestern part of the country, adjacent to the Turkish border. It has an estimated 4.4 million inhabitants, including one million children. Nearly two-thirds fled their homes to escape the regime’s oppression. Some 800,000 live in tents, even in winter. Many more live in ruins.

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.