Iran's leaders had hoped to find a "Goldilocks option" to placate their domestic audience and deter Israel after it attacked their embassy in Damascus, said The Economist. "What they settled on, though, may prove to be a strategic blunder that harms their interests."

In response to the Israeli airstrike in Syria that killed seven Iranian officers, including a top general, Tehran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel on Saturday. Yet Iran's first-ever direct attack on Israel resulted in zero fatalities, as allies helped shoot down the bulk of the weapons. 

What did the commentators say? 
Iran "isn't a phantom boogeyman anymore," said Politico, and that's a "godsend" for Benjamin Netanyahu, who can turn Saturday's attack to his political advantage. The Israeli prime minister is under pressure over the war in Gaza, but Tehran looks to have "let him off the hook" and made the case for support for Israel "almost unanswerable." 

The near-universal condemnation of Iran and renewed support for Israel from the international community show how the dial has moved. Joe Biden said U.S. support for Israel is now "ironclad," while Rishi Sunak said Britain would "continue to stand up for Israel’s security." Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Iran had suffered a "double defeat" in failing in its missile attack and showing itself to be the "malign influence in the region." 

Strong words were matched with action. Britain and France — NATO's two European nuclear powers — took part in the defense effort against the Iranian bombardment, along with the U.S. and Israel's Arab allies. 

What next? 
Tehran's actions allow Netanyahu to "double down" on his war against Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and then possibly switch to Lebanon's Hezbollah, another Iranian Shi'ite proxy, said Politico. The Israeli prime minister now has "greater leeway to cast the Gaza war as a struggle of national survival against a well-armed geostrategic heavyweight, led by Islamist fundamentalists pursuing nuclear arms." 

Iran's operational failure in damaging Israel has also "exposed how weak they are when it comes to the conventional military threat," Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told The Wall Street Journal. But this could carry escalatory risks, as "decision-makers in Tehran may be increasingly tempted by the nuclear option."

As artificial intelligence continues to permeate every aspect of our daily lives, concerns over how it should be used are causing fierce debates. For those in the LGBTQ+ community, recent reports have shed light on how AI can be used to create a more inclusive environment — and a more marginalizing one. 

Oversimplifying a deep complexity
These concerns have been brewing. By 2021, it was a common assumption that AI would "always fail LGBTQ people," anthropologist and gender studies expert Mary L. Gray said to Forbes. While LGBTQ+ communities continue to evolve, it is the "very fact that we grow and develop our identities, and our community, which means AI will struggle to understand [LGBTQ+ people]," Forbes said. 

Part of the problem is that AI builds "decision-making models by looking at existing or 'staple' decisions," which it then tries to replicate, Gray said to Forbes. So by design, AI "excludes and pushes to the margins anything that doesn't have a robust example." This can be problematic when trying to include people who identify with a wide spectrum of sexualities. When AI was asked by reporters at Wired to create an image of a queer person, the program "universally responded with stereotypical depictions of LGBTQ culture," said the outlet. 

Possibility of danger
These AI-generated results "frequently presented a simplistic, whitewashed version of queer life," said Wired. And when it comes to the LGTBQ+ community, AI is doing more than just generating images. 

One group of Swiss researchers says it has developed an AI model that "can tell if you're gay or straight," said Coda Story. Critics say that this model, like Midjourney, oversimplifies sexuality and gender. "Bisexual and asexual individuals exist but are 'simplified away' by the Swiss study to make their experimental setup workable," Qinlan Shen, a research scientist at Oracle Labs, said to Coda Story. This means that AI technology "can and will be used as a tool of surveillance and repression in places of the world where LGBT+ expression is punished."