As far as the Western powers are concerned, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been concluded and is going into effect. As far as the Islamic Republic is concerned, however, nothing is final; indeed, argues Lawrence Franklin, its government already may be planning to walk away from the deal:

The publication of [a] letter of October 21 by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, leaves little doubt that Iran is now demanding fundamental changes to the JCPOA. The conditions spelled out by Khamenei will derail the timetable for the document’s implementation probably beyond President Obama’s term of office. In part, Tehran most likely wants to embarrass the U.S. and President Obama personally by denying him a legacy-related political victory, just as Tehran apparently wants to embarrass them by arresting yet another American hostage two weeks ago, the American-Iranian business executive Siamak Namazi. The [number] of Americans imprisoned in Iran is now five. . . .

It is probably safe to assume that the Western negotiators of the JCPOA have been introduced to the Middle Eastern-bazaar method of negotiation: after an agreement has been concluded, it becomes a basis for further demands.

If Iran succeeds in garnering the benefits of even partial relief of sanctions, and if it attracts additional foreign investment as well as increased international commerce, it will ignore the JCPOA altogether. The only improbable question is: will Iran walk away before or after picking up its $150 billion?

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.