Last week, China and Iran agreed to create a joint commission to further military cooperation, making more public the Islamic Republic’s relationship with a country that has long supplied it with arms. Patrick Megahan and Behnam Taleblu write:

China has . . . equipped Iran with surface-to-air missiles, fighters, fast attack craft, and ballistic-missile equipment. Key among these technologies are guidance systems for Iran’s missiles, which [make up] the largest arsenal in the Middle East. China has even served as a transit point for North Korean missile technology en route to Iran.

Reports on the [specifics of the agreement] have thus far been vague, revealing only a stated interest in combatting terrorism and a promise to hold joint military drills. Still, the increasingly public nature of their cooperation should not come as a surprise. Both Iran and China . . . hope to supplant Washington as the preeminent military power of their respective regions. Moreover, Iran is now eyeing potential purchases for when a UN-mandated arms ban expires in 2020—or possibly earlier, per last summer’s nuclear deal. Admittedly, China is not the only country positioning itself to cash in on Iranian arms purchases. Over the last two years, Russia has stepped up its relationship with Tehran [as well]. . . .

In an era when U.S. military resources are already strained globally, agreements like this between Iran and China make it harder for Washington to defend its partners and deter aggression around the world. As a new administration prepares to take office, U.S. policy makers must prepare for the likelihood that an Iran no longer under arms embargo will capitalize on its . . . partnership with China.

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.