Although it was originally thought that Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked a Saudi oil pipeline with a drone on May 14, the U.S. government recently confirmed that in fact it was Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia fully under Tehran’s control. Kataib Hezbollah is but one of several paramilitary groups the Islamic Republic funds and directs in Iraq, under the auspices of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Michael Pregent explains the implications:

[Iran’s] ability to carry out proxy attacks against a U.S. ally from Iraq, another supposed U.S. ally, highlights America’s failed strategy in Baghdad. As a result of American and Saudi pressure, Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi ordered the closure of IRGC militia offices across the country on July 1. However, militias have ignored similar calls before; the Iraqi government either cannot or will not remove the Iranian-backed militias from its territory, nor will it prevent them from targeting U.S. allies. Senior Iraqi politicians will not dare challenge the militia leaders. . . .

Instead, the Iraqi government has been compromised by Iranian influence and allows senior Iranian figures to freely operate in Iraqi territory. [For instance], Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, . . . holds an official Iraqi government position [and] is also the leader of Kataib Hezbollah. . . . As a member of government, Mohandes has access to U.S. intelligence, training, and equipment. . . . Kataib Hezbollah has [also] been trained by the IRGC and Lebanese Hizballah to fire advanced guided missiles from Southern Syria to Israel.

The Iraqi governments’ current strategy to counter Iranian influence involves integrating Kataib Hezbollah and other militias into its armed forces, a plan Pregent argues could make matters worse:

The result will be [Iran-backed] militias wearing Iraqi uniforms. . . . They will be the ones flying U.S. F-16s; they will be the ones driving U.S. M1A1 Abrams tanks, as well as the newly delivered Russian T-80 tanks. They will still answer to [the IRGC] directly.

The U.S. needs to change course in Iraq. The militias need to be opposed, and Mohandes needs to be removed, one way or another.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.