As of yesterday, the U.S. has re-imposed in their entirety the economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic that were in force on the eve of the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran has previously responded to intense sanctions by ratcheting up its enrichment of uranium, as if to prove that it would not be cowed; in other instances it has attacked American forces in the Middle East or Israeli targets in Europe. But the current situation is different: Iran has so far responded to the American withdrawal from the nuclear deal by insisting that it will continue to abide by its terms, in the hope that Europe will continue to want to trade with it. If it now publicly resumes its nuclear activities, Europe will likely cease to provide cover. The situation, writes Michael Eisenstadt, puts the ayatollahs in a bind Washington ought to take advantage of:

Iran’s response to the U.S. withdrawal from the [nuclear deal] will largely depend . . . on how deeply renewed U.S. sanctions bite. If Iran is able to muddle through—because it sells enough oil, repatriates sufficient funds from foreign customers, benefits from higher oil prices, or some combination of these—it may continue to observe the deal’s limits and try to wait President Trump out, hoping for a different U.S. president in January 2021. Meanwhile, it may push back against U.S. efforts by largely symbolic means—in order to avoid a military confrontation with the United States, while lashing out however it can against U.S. allies, partners, and perceived proxies.

This is not necessarily a bad place for the U.S. government to be, with the Iranian leadership contained by the deal’s limits and rigorous sanctions. . . . .

Should sanctions cut deeply and exacerbate ongoing domestic unrest, Iran will face a choice: agree to a new round of negotiations with the United States in which it offers concessions in return for sanctions relief, or undertake various destabilizing activities—violating the nuclear deal’s limits, intensifying proxy attacks on U.S. allies, or even conducting proxy operations against U.S. interests and personnel—so that it can re-engage Washington from a position of strength. If hardliners in Tehran win the day, destabilization efforts could even include waging a low-level, open-ended struggle to oust the United States from the region. . . . Preserving the credibility of U.S. deterrence will therefore be key to avoiding escalation.

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.