Ample evidence suggests that Iran is cooperating with North Korea in developing nuclear technology, write Emily Landau and Alon Levkowitz. But how likely is it that the U.S. and its allies will pay much attention?

Iran has a clear interest in latching onto North Korea’s program—Pyongyang both has technology that Tehran wants and seems to care only about being paid, as demonstrated by the nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria. There is already evidence of Iranian-North Korean cooperation in the ballistic-missile field, cooperation with implications that extend to the nuclear realm as well.

There’s a history. The security relations between Iran and North Korea began during the Iran-Iraq war, and since that time, their missile and, later, nuclear cooperation has continued and expanded. In September 2012, for example, Iran and North Korea signed an agreement for technological and scientific cooperation. A few years ago, they also established the “anti-hegemonic front.” . . . [F]or Iran, [cooperation] opens a backdoor channel, conveniently beyond the bounds of inspections and scrutiny [as well as] the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) itself. So Iran can make necessary advances in North Korea while ostensibly adhering to that agreement.

It is difficult to know the precise extent of cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang in the nuclear realm, . . . partly due to the lack of incentive on the part of the U.S. intelligence agencies to share findings that might cause difficulties for the [JCPOA].

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.