The looming crisis with Pyongyang, writes Alan Dershowitz, demonstrates the dangers of the nuclear agreement with Tehran:

The deal signed by Iran in 2015 postpones the Islamic Republic’s quest for a nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t prevent it, despite [the] unequivocal statement in the preamble to the agreement that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will [it] ever seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons.” Recall that North Korea provided similar assurances to the Clinton administration in 1994, only to break them several years later—with no real consequences. . . . The body of the agreement itself—the portion Iran believes is legally binding—does not preclude Iran from developing nuclear weapons after a certain time, variously estimated as between ten to fifteen years from the signing of the agreement. Nor does it prevent Iran from perfecting its delivery systems, including nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

If we are not to make the same mistake with Iran that we made with North Korea, we must do something now—before Iran secures a weapon—to deter the mullahs from becoming a nuclear power, over which we would have little or no leverage.

Congress should now enact legislation declaring that Iran’s reaffirmation that it will never “develop or acquire nuclear weapons” is an integral part of the agreement and represents the policy of the United States. . . . [In addition], Congress should authorize the president to take military action against Iran’s nuclear-weapons program if it were to cross [specified] red lines.

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.