Although al-Qaeda and Iran sit on opposite sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide, and often denounce one another, they are not averse to cooperating. Osama bin Laden in fact noted in a 2007 memo that the Islamic Republic was his organization’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” With the death of bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Oved Lobel argues that the terrorist group’s entanglement with Iran may grow even deeper:

[T]he next in line for leadership—assuming he himself is still alive—is widely agreed to be al-Qaeda’s long-standing military chief Sayf al-Adl, who has been based in Iran for decades. If anyone can revive the organization’s fortunes, it is al-Adl, and with al-Qaeda officials now on notice that Afghanistan still isn’t safe for them, many may choose to relocate to Iran. The relationship between Zawahiri’s pre-al-Qaeda Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including its Lebanese branch Hizballah, began as early as 1991, eventually evolving into a deep partnership between al-Qaeda and Tehran.

This is where Israel could come into the picture. Almost exactly two years ago, Israel reportedly assassinated al-Qaeda’s then-number two, Abu Mohammad al-Masri, in the center of Tehran. . . . In recent years, Israel’s pervasive infiltration and agent network across Iran has allowed it to assassinate IRGC officials, military officers, nuclear scientists, and anyone else likely to pose a threat, including al-Qaeda leaders, practically at will.

As the U.S. seemingly has no similar network and would be very unlikely to conduct a strike directly on Iranian territory, it would have to rely once again on Israel’s agents to kill Sayf al-Adl if it became necessary to head off any potential attempts to reconstitute al-Qaeda there.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.