On Wednesday, the Associated Press (AP) released a detailed report on its cooperation with the Third Reich during World War II, which involved publishing photographs provided to it by Nazi officials and providing American photographs in return. Michael Rosenwald explains:

The report includes documents recently declassified at the request of AP’s management. . . . As part of the arrangement [with the Nazis], AP shared pictures of U.S. war operations and Allied advances, which were reviewed by Hitler and published in Nazi publications. . . .

John Daniszewski, AP’s vice-president for standards and editor-at-large, said that the organization’s journalists “were doing their best to get out information that the world needed.” He defended the photos—they are still available for purchase on an AP website—by noting that blatantly staged propaganda was excluded and that AP’s captions made the Nazi origins clear. But a review of photos published in American newspapers shows that wasn’t always the case. . . .

Photos were traded in Lisbon, [the capital of neutral Portugal], via diplomatic pouch with the help of another AP correspondent. A route through Sweden later emerged. At least 10,000 photos went back and forth.

AP officials notified the U.S. censorship office of the deal on July 13, 1942. The office was run by Byron Price, a former AP executive editor, recruited personally by President Roosevelt, according to the AP report. The report does not detail the Americans’ rationale for approving the deal, except to indicate that there might be “information value” to the backdoor relationship.

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.