Since America’s withdrawal from the 2015 agreement with Tehran, the latter has continued to present itself as abiding by its terms. But on Wednesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani threatened to cease its (alleged) compliance and to begin stockpiling enriched uranium, along with other steps prohibited by the deal—unless Europe, Russia, and China can give his country relief from U.S. sanctions. Some EU officials have already declared that this threat shows the failure of President Trump’s policies. Eli Lake disagrees:

Iran has been threatening the stability of the nuclear deal . . . pretty much since it was concluded. Remember Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s complaint in 2016 that the U.S. was not doing enough to encourage foreign banks to invest in Iran’s economy? “The United States needs first to show that it is implementing the [deal],” Zarif said.

So why hasn’t Iran pulled out of that agreement, given President Trump’s decision to re-impose the crippling sanctions that his predecessor lifted? One reason is that despite everything Trump has done in the last year, the agreement remains a sweet deal for Iran. If it complies with the deal’s limits for the next seven-to-thirteen years, [after which those limits will be lifted], it can stockpile as much low-enriched uranium as it wants. In the meantime, it can install more efficient centrifuges and keep its once-illicit infrastructure.

Trump’s campaign of maximum pressure offers a way out of this flawed bargain. By waging economic war on Iran, the president is using the same tactics that pressured the regime into nuclear negotiations in the first place. . . . This time around, Trump and his cabinet have vowed that any negotiations will also address Iran’s support for terrorism and its missile proliferation, along with its regional meddling.

So instead of scrambling to come up with another special financial mechanism or a series of bribes to keep Iran in the deal, Europe’s great powers should respond to Iran’s latest threats with some threats of their own: if Iran abrogates its commitments to the deal, Europe will begin enforcing its own sanctions on Iran’s banks and oil sector. . . . Slowly and surely, the maximum pressure is building. Instead of trying to relieve it, the Europeans should use that pressure to get a better nuclear bargain with Iran.

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.