Sharing his views on the resurgence of religion in modern society, Jonathan Sacks, the UK’s chief rabbi emeritus, also discusses how Judaism and Christianity have learned to shun gratuitous violence and how Islam might someday do the same. But Muslims, he argues, must reform their religion themselves, not least by wrestling with its “hard” texts; devotees of other religions can provide little help. (Interview by Douglas Murray):

There is no way that one religion can prescribe for another. I think that change of heart has to come from within. Judaism went through that crisis in the first century C.E. Josephus, who was an eyewitness to those events, said that the Jews inside the besieged Jerusalem were more intent on killing each other than Vespasian and Titus and their forces outside. Within two centuries, Jews and Judaism had become a pacific religion—not a pacifist religion but a pacific religion—so that in the third century or around then, when faced with a verse about military virtues, they could no longer understand the process. You can trace it. The same thing happens with Christianity in Europe between the 16th and the 17th centuries . . . Out of that there emerges again a formal or substantive separation of the religion and power. Religion moved from power to influence. It follows that it takes a civil war within a religion in the broadest sense to make that religion realize that it must divest itself of power.

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.