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.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].