The brilliant and much-maligned political philosopher Leo Strauss has often been painted by his detractors as a reactionary warmonger. In a recent book, Robert Howse argues that in fact he espoused a firm belief in international law and cooperation. Furthermore, Howse contends, Strauss came to his position through introspection and the peculiarly Jewish process of teshuvah—repentance and return—in his case, for his youthful flirtation with the German right. Howse comes to these surprising conclusions in part through careful analysis of recently-published transcripts of Strauss’s classroom teaching. Steven B. Smith writes:

It is only in [his] seminars on [the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Hugo] Grotius and [Immanuel] Kant . . . that Strauss applied the insights gleaned from Thucydides to the revival of international law and just-war theory in the years after World War II. Strauss, we learn, was by no means opposed to a policy of enlightened internationalism. The very fact that he devoted an entire course to Grotius’s Rights of War and Peace is itself revealing. Here he found Grotius struggling with the same question that had occupied him since his early Weimar period, namely, how to fashion a political theory that threads the needle between sheer Machiavellianism and Kantian moralism. Accordingly, he finds in Grotius’s idea of a law of peoples, the ius gentium, a way to provide a ground for political ethics that is both rational and secular, and yet that recognizes the need for statesmanlike prudence and the ability to adapt to the needs of circumstance.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”