As the Islamic Republic wraps up its most recent Holocaust-cartoon festival, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh consider the central role of anti-Semitism not only in the regime’s official ideology but in its grand strategy:

Anti-Semitism was part of [the current Iranian regime’s] inception. The revolution’s father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spent much of his life indulging it. In Khomeini’s rendition, the Jews, always untrustworthy in Islamic history, are surrogates of Western imperialism who have displaced Palestinian Muslims and even distorted Islam’s scriptural texts. Khomeini’s hatred toward Israel exceeded even his disdain for America. . . . [I]t was America’s conduct, not its existence, that the mullahs contested. Israel, on the other hand, was for Khomeini an unlawful entity, irrespective of its actual policies and behavior. No peace compact or negotiated settlement with the aggrieved Palestinians could ameliorate this essential illegitimacy. Israel must be wiped off the map.

Since the ayatollah’s death, Tehran’s efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state have continued, no matter who among the ruling elite has had the upper hand. . . .

In foreign affairs, this antagonism to Israel enforces the clerical regime’s claims to regional leadership, especially at a time when the mullahs’ ecumenical message to Sunni Muslims has been compromised by Iran’s role in provoking and sustaining sectarian warfare in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Iran’s anti-Semitic assault is one of the few rhetorical weapons the clerics can deploy that has broad popular appeal among Sunni Muslims. Arab leaders may envision agreements with Israel, but many of their constituents loathe the idea. . . .

And the clerical regime’s anti-Semitism will grow worse as the rewards of the nuclear deal increase. The mullahs no longer have to worry how the regime’s hatred of Jews plays in the West—the buffoonish character of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is gone and sanctions are falling [away]. . . . What matters most is the war for Muslim minds, and the clerical regime intends to exploit anti-Semitism for all that it’s worth.

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.