“A constructive deal could easily have been struck [in 2015], but it wasn’t,” said President Trump in his speech on Tuesday announcing American withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran. Except, perhaps, for the word “easily,” the president is right, argues David Horovitz:

“A constructive deal”—that is, a deal to dismantle Iran’s rogue nuclear program—could indeed have been struck in the Obama years, when economic pressure had dragged the Iranian regime kicking and screaming to the negotiating table. The ayatollahs feared for their hold on Iran; the West had maximal leverage. The Russians and Chinese would have sought to resist a stringent agreement that put Iran out of the nuclear-weapons business for the long term, but a U.S. administration that made plain the top priority it placed on the imperative for an agreement to keep the world’s most dangerous regime from attaining the world’s most dangerous weapons of mass destruction could have gotten its way.

Israel, the Little Satan in the ayatollahs’ rapacious sights, could have injected some Middle East knowledge into this battle of wills, but was kept at a firm distance by the Americans. The only truly dependable ally of the West in this region, with the best intelligence apparatuses, was told to butt out. Worse, it was haughtily informed that since it didn’t know what was in the deal when it was taking shape, it shouldn’t be objecting to it; and then, when it was done, Israel was falsely accused of being opposed to any deal, no matter what it contained. . . .

Iran is currently threatening that it may resume uranium enrichment and boasting that it has improved its technology so that it can enrich to higher levels than ever before—all while complying with the deal. That tells you all you need to know about the agreement. It did not require Iran to trash all of its centrifuges, and it allowed Iran to continue research and development on enrichment. . . .

Trump’s decision to nix rather than fix the 2015 agreement creates a highly complex new reality. Hitherto, the [six parties to the deal with Iran], however strained the ties between them, were at least ostensibly lined up together, behind their infirm accord, against the ayatollahs. Now, we have the U.S. on one side, Iran on the other, and Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia all pulling in slightly different directions in-between. Iran can be relied upon to exploit the disunity. But don’t blame Donald Trump for that. Blame the original sin—a deal that was supposed to dismantle Iran’s rogue nuclear-weapons program, but, simply, didn’t.

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.