Looking carefully at Salman Rushdie’s 1988 The Satanic Verses, Hussein Ibish argues that “no reader could come away with the idea that the novel was attempting to tell the tale of the birth of Islam or critique the religion.” What then, explains the price put on Rushdie’s head by the Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which provoked his recent stabbing? Ibish answers:

Chapter 11 of the novel paints a stinging and remarkably incisive caricature of Khomeini himself. It depicts “the Imam”—a fanatical cleric forced to live in the West, just as Khomeini was when he was exiled to France after being expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Among the many absurdities of this character is that he wants to stop time, an obvious parody of Khomeini’s passionate hatred of progress and modernity.

It is hard to imagine a more precise and stinging lampoon of Khomeini and his malevolent mission. There’s more besides in chapter 11 about the Imam character that would have caused Khomeini additional, and indeed greater, personal offence and outrage. He and his followers were certainly well aware of it when they decided the author had to die. Of course, they claimed to be responding to an attack “against Islam, the prophet of Islam, and the Quran.” But there is no doubt it was, above all, about the wounded ego of a man anointing himself a “supreme leader.”

That Khomeini and his followers recognized him and his fanatical regime in the character of the Imam—and then acted precisely according to monstrous type in 1989 and ever since—tells us everything we need to know about their ongoing addiction to violence and hostility to creativity and freedom of thought. . . . Rushdie’s attacker is unlikely to see any of the promised millions. But Iranian gloating confirms who is responsible for this heinous attack.

At the moment, the U.S. government is considering whether to extend billions of dollars of sanctions relief to the Islamic Republic as part of a revived nuclear deal.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.