Granted independence by Britain in 1970, the Shiite-majority island kingdom of Bahrain has long been the object of Iranian designs. Tehran, which has been supporting insurrectionist groups there for years, has recently escalated its rhetoric. Michael Rubin writes:

[T]he Iranian government appears determined to test President Trump’s resolve by ramping up pressure on Bahrain. Earlier this month, Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zonour, [a high-ranking Iranian official], explicitly threatened to level the U.S. base in Bahrain with ballistic missiles. . . .

Every Friday for 38 years, either the supreme leader or a cleric appointed by him has led Friday prayers in central Tehran and delivered a sermon that highlights the official priorities and positions of the Islamic Republic. This past Friday, the appointed prayer leader . . . told the Bahraini government, “Failure awaits you; your destruction is near.”

Such rhetoric should not be dismissed as empty. After all, the Islamic Republic is on the warpath. Its carefully cultivated proxies are the dominant power in Lebanon, prop up the Syrian government, . . . and have staged a coup d’état in Yemen. The possibility that Iranian officials might target not only the U.S. presence in Bahrain but the entire country is not unthinkable. . . .

If President Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wish to show allies that America will once again stand by them, and if Trump is serious about standing up to terrorism and aggression, it is time to support Bahrain forcefully and openly. Simply put, Tehran will interpret silence as weakness, and weakness as an invitation to further aggression.

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.