The Iranian elections, held last Friday, have been hailed by many observers in the West as a victory for “moderates,” with some even going so far as to claim the results as evidence of the success of American diplomatic outreach in producing a more friendly Islamic Republic. However, Eyal Zisser explains, such an analysis is deeply flawed:

Tens of millions of Iranians—many of whom badly want a new revolution to replace the Islamic Revolution that ruined all the good things in their homeland—flocked to some 53,000 polling stations across the country to express support for moderate candidates belonging to the reformist camp led by President Hassan Rouhani. And indeed, the initial results, which were most certainly fixed here and there as is the custom in Iran, revealed that Rouhani and his fellow reformist camp leader, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, did well. . . .

But we should question the meaning of this celebration of democracy, and we should wonder whether the results of the election . . . will really change the way Iran operates in the regional arena and with regard to Israel. Moreover, we should ask if these results mark the beginning of a countdown to the end of the ayatollahs’ regime. The answer to that question is “no.”

After all, there were thousands of candidates demanding real change who were banned from participating in this celebration of democracy in Tehran.

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.