As tensions rise in the Persian Gulf, some observers, among them some prominent former Obama-administration officials, have criticized the Trump administration for provoking the Islamic Republic. Not only is that not so, writes Eli Lake, but their misconstruction of events has already led U.S. allies to dangerous conclusions:

European diplomats are urging President Trump to drop his campaign of maximum pressure and adopt one of “maximum restraint.” This is asking to be blackmailed. And now that Iran is threatening to exceed the limits to uranium enrichment it agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal, it’s more important than ever to understand that restraint and dialogue will not bring Iran to heel. . . .

Iran was destabilizing the Middle East even as it negotiated with the West over its nuclear program starting in 2013. . . . Iran has waged its own war against the U.S. and its allies for decades. It has supplied insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan with the roadside bombs that maimed and killed U.S. soldiers. It tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. More recently, Iran’s diplomats and operatives were tied to terror plots in Western Europe. That’s one reason why Trump is now trying a maximum-pressure approach—to get Iran to end its own adventures in the Middle East. . . .

Iran’s bellicosity began long before Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign. It has been a feature of Iranian statecraft since the 1979 revolution. If allies in Europe and Democrats in Congress are worried about war with Iran, they should start by holding the regime accountable for its actions, instead of blaming them on an administration trying to deter them.

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.