During his historic visit to Abu Dhabi earlier this month, Pope Francis signed a joint statement with Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyeb, who, by dint of his position as the grand imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar University, is widely considered Sunni Islam’s leading religious authority. The document strongly condemns religious coercion and religiously motivated violence, while praising freedom of conscience and tolerance. Yet Tayyeb, much like Mahmoud Abbas and Yasir Arafat before him, seems to espouse very different views when speaking in Arabic, as Raymond Ibrahim writes:

Tayeb . . . is on record as saying that apostates—that is, anyone born to a Muslim father who wishes to leave Islam—should be punished. As to the penalty they deserve, in July 2016, during one of his televised programs, Tayeb reaffirmed that “those learned in Islamic law [al-fuqaha] and the imams of the four schools of jurisprudence consider apostasy a crime and agree that the apostate must either renounce his apostasy or else be killed.” . . .

[Moreover, the] document Tayeb cosigned with Pope Francis . . . says “we resolutely declare that religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility, and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood.” [But] political commentators in Egypt have noted that, despite al-Azhar’s harsh attitude concerning “infidels” and “apostates,” when asked to denounce Islamic State as “un-Islamic,” al-Tayeb refused. . . .

Tayeb’s response to [his Egyptian] critics has been to accuse Israel. During a March 2018 interview on Egyptian television, he said, “All those mouthpieces that croak—out of ignorance or because they were told to—that the al-Azhar curricula are the cause of terrorism never talk about Israel, about Israel’s prisons, about the genocides perpetrated by the Zionist entity state . . . If not for the abuse of the region by means of the Zionist entity, there would never have been any problem.” . . .

It is difficult, therefore, to see this document as anything more than a superficial show, presumably for the West.

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.