The Spanish and British parliaments have voted to recognize a fictive Palestinian state; the Swedish government has also recognized such a state; and France is poised to be next. In the short run, these declarations are meaningless and purely symbolic. But, argues Guy Millière, they may soon add up to something:

The next step in anti-Israeli offensives will take place very soon. Mahmoud Abbas and the “Palestinian” leaders will go to the United Nations, and seek recognition of a “Palestinian State” by the UN Security Council. If they succeed, “Palestine” could become a full member-state of the UN without having to make any concessions to anyone at all—and free to continue inciting terror, committing terror, and glorifying those who practice terror. Abbas and Palestinian leaders might then demand that the Security Council set a deadline for Israel’s withdrawal to the “pre-1967 lines.”

France and the United Kingdom and will abstain, which will mean that they agree. The only thing that can prevent all this is a U.S. veto. However, relations between the United States and Israel have so deeply deteriorated since the beginning of the Obama presidency that many Israeli diplomats think a U.S. veto uncertain.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.