As recent attacks on American positions in Iraq have shown, the Islamic Republic maintains a significant arsenal of rockets, which play an essential role in its military doctrine. And in typical fashion, the Iranian-made missiles that killed an American contractor on December 27 were fired by one of Tehran’s many proxy militias, which it has supplied amply with such weapons. The ayatollahs have also armed Hizballah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen with numerous missiles, some of them quite sophisticated. Their aim, writes Uzi Rubin, is to surround the Jewish state with a “ring of fire”:

At present, the Israeli heartland is threatened by Iranian-supplied rockets and missiles from the north (Lebanon) and the southwest (Gaza). [Reportedly], Tehran has [also] begun to supply its affiliated militias in Iraq with missiles that can reach Israel. . . . Iran can hit Israel with missiles from within its

 

own territory and has no need to base them in Iraq, but its proclaimed “no first strike” policy prevents it from threatening Israel directly unless it is first attacked by Israel. [However], Iranian missiles in Iraq—repainted and rebranded as “Iraqi-developed”—would not need the excuse of justified retaliation to be employed against Israel and would allow Tehran to maintain a smokescreen of deniability.

[In addition], there is already a covert Iranian missile force masquerading as a “Yemeni-developed” arsenal in Houthi-controlled Yemen, and it is directed against Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. This arsenal has been used over the past four years to strike deep into Saudi Arabia, including eight attacks on the capital city of Riyadh. . . . The Iranians may now be striving to extend the capability of their missile force in Yemen to cover Israel, too.

Yemen lies southeast of Israel, a direction from which no strategic threat has been envisaged to date. Deployment of Israel-range ballistic and cruise missiles in Yemen would force Jerusalem to dilute its existing north- and southwestern-facing defenses in favor of a southeastern-facing defensive shield, or to invest heavily in additional early-warning and active-defense systems to close the gap.

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.