In October, shortly before stepping down, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced that talks over providing Riyadh with American assistance in developing its civilian nuclear capabilities had reached an impasse over Saudi reluctance to pledge not to enrich uranium. Once a country can enrich uranium itself, it can produce not only the low-enriched fuel used for civilian purposes but also the high-enriched form necessary for nuclear weapons. For decades, the American-led nonproliferation regime has allowed nations to purchase the former while forbidding them to enrich it themselves. But the Obama administration’s recognition of an Iranian “right to enrich” has overturned that standard. Yoel Guzansky notes the consequences:

The kingdom’s interest in nuclearization is nothing new, [but] in March 2018, [the] Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman said publicly—and explicitly—for the first time that if Iran acquired military nuclear capabilities, the Saudis would follow suit without delay.

It’s possible that a dangerous nuclear loop has been established between Iran and its neighbors: Iran’s nuclear efforts are motivating the states that feel threatened by Iran to nuclearize, and attempts by Saudi Arabia—and Turkey—to nuclearize do nothing to convince Iran to stop its nuclear program. At some point, Iran and its neighbors’ progress on nuclear infrastructure and knowledge could pass the point of no return.

Israel has an interest in preventing even Arab countries with which it cooperates, whether openly or in secret, from nuclearizing. This is because of the concern over a regional dynamic of nuclearization, which could push Iran to step up its own nuclear work; concern over dissemination of nuclear information; and concerns about a future change to the alignment of regional players or changes to friendly nations—for example, if a regime were to fall.

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.