Now that the U.S. has begun implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and the Iranian parliament has voted in favor of it, Iran’s supreme leader has finally given his opinion. As Michael Rubin writes, it is something short of an endorsement:

[I]n an open letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Khamenei effectively has declared he will accept the agreement so long as the United States accepts his interpretations. He has put many of Iran’s commitments with regard to the plutonium-producing Arak heavy-water reactor and the depletion of Iran’s uranium stock on hold until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certifies that concerns regarding the possible military dimensions of Iran’s programs have been sufficiently addressed. In effect, unless Iran gets a satisfactory ruling that it has cooperated fully and resolved [any outstanding] issues, it simply will continue business as usual (all the while receiving sanctions relief and its unfrozen assets as if it were cooperating).

In addition, Khamenei has demanded that Iran will not suffer any new sanctions, regardless of what behavior it might engage in. . . . If President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry accede to Khamenei’s interpretation, they will in effect be granting him immunity from any accountability if, for example, he openly conducts terrorism against civilians, anywhere on earth. . . . If he decides, for example, that Iran’s remaining Bahai should be imprisoned or put to death, he expects to pay no penalty.

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.