The Islamic Republic is in possession of the Middle East’s largest arsenal of missiles, most of which are of the short- and medium-range ballistic variety, and many of which could be equipped with a nuclear warhead. In addition, the Iranian proxy Hizballah has its own massive stockpile of rockets. As Michael Eisenstadt explains, missiles play a crucial role in Tehran’s strategic thinking, and pose a number of dangers:

[T]he recent nuclear accord with Iran . . . did not impose new constraints on Iran’s missile program. On the contrary, it loosened [existing ones]—and included provisions for their lifting in eight years, if not sooner. Iran’s missile force could double or triple in size by the time the major limits imposed [on its nuclear program] by the deal are lifted fifteen years from now. By then, Iran’s growing missile and cyberwarfare capabilities will pose major challenges to regional missile defenses, military and critical-infrastructure targets, and civilian population centers. This would make preventive action by Israel or the United States, in the event of an attempted Iranian nuclear breakout, much more costly.

[Furthermore], an Iranian nuclear missile force would be highly destabilizing. Short missile-flight times between Iran and Israel, the lack of reliable crisis-communication channels, and the impossibility of knowing whether incoming Iranian missiles are conventional or nuclear could someday spur Israel—and any other regional nuclear states that emerge in the interim—to adopt a launch-on-warning posture, undermining the prospects for a stable nuclear deterrent balance in the region.

[Already, Iran has established a “deterrence triad” that ] rests on its ability to: (1) threaten navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, (2) undertake unilateral and proxy terrorist attacks on multiple continents, and (3) conduct long-range strikes using its own missiles or by way of long-range rockets and short-range missiles in the hands of proxies such as Hizballah. Iran’s growing cyberwarfare capabilities may eventually become a fourth leg of this deterrent/warfighting triad, enabling it to strike at adversaries and to project power globally, instantaneously, and on a sustained basis, in ways it cannot in the physical domain.

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.