As Iran, with rockets, mines, and torpedoes, responds to U.S. sanctions and efforts to restrict its nuclear program, Dmitri Shufutinsky points to ways that Washington can retaliate:

For the time being, the U.S. is wise to avoid an unnecessary war with Iran. Israeli airstrikes in Syria and Gaza have weakened Iran’s project [of expanding its power into Syria], as has the destruction of tunnels Hizballah had dug into northern Israel. Renewed American sanctions on Tehran have forced the mullahs to cut military spending as well as support for proxy groups.

But more can and should be done to stop the Iranians from escalating. President Trump should start by revoking sanctions waivers on Iraq that allow the country to import Iranian energy. He should also expand the sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical industry and remove sanctions waivers for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This would continue to weaken the Iranian economy. At the same time, the use of force will be needed should Iran continue attacking oil tankers or U.S. drones in the Gulf. Rather than hitting Iran directly, the U.S. should destroy its military assets and proxies in Iraq and Syria. It can do so largely from the air, although, if necessary, U.S. troops in the region can work in concert with Kurdish peshmerga [fighters] and Israeli airstrikes.

Denying Iran a shield in its “near abroad” will protect U.S. bases and allies in the region. But, . . . coupled with a weak economy, [it also] might be sufficient to force Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to “drink from the poisoned chalice” and negotiate with the U.S. for a better deal.

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.