In December, Sami al-Arian, a former professor of computer science, took part in an Indiana University-sponsored discussion of terrorism. While a computer scientist without specific expertise in cybersecurity might seem an unlikely candidate for such a panel, al-Arian has the additional qualification of being a convicted terrorist. David May and Melissa Sacks write:

Al-Arian was arrested in 2003 and sentenced in 2006 to 57 months in prison for conspiring to aid Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Iran-backed and U.S.-designated terrorist organization. . . . PIJ attacks have killed more than 100 people, including at least two American students. The group continues to plot attacks against Israeli civilians, and its decades-long campaign of firing rockets at Israeli population centers reached new heights in August 2022.

In his guilty plea, al-Arian, who worked as a computer-science professor at the University of South Florida (USF), confessed that he and several other co-conspirators were associated with the PIJ from the late 1980s to mid-1990s. PIJ members and associates used the university as cover to enter the United States. At USF, al-Arian co-founded a think tank and charity, both of which served as fronts for the PIJ in America.

Ignoring all this evidence, and despite his guilty plea, al-Arian has tried to present himself as an innocent victim of counterterrorism overreach. After more than a decade of litigation surrounding a related contempt-of-court indictment, the United States deported al-Arian to Turkey in 2015. But this did not stop him from rejoining American academic circles.

Following al-Arian’s 2006 conviction, the sentencing judge described al-Arian as a “master manipulator.” Nearly seventeen years later, al-Arian continues to pose as a professor while recruiting sympathetic colleagues to help him whitewash terrorism.

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.