The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—as the 2015 nuclear deal is formally known—required the Islamic Republic to convert its Fordow uranium-enrichment facility to a “nuclear, physics, and technology center” for international civilian scientific cooperation. Thanks to the cache of documents the Mossad spirited out of Iran last year, there is no longer any doubt that this heavily fortified facility, long kept secret, had been designed for the production of weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Drawing on publicly available information, including satellite images, David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Frank Pabian, and Jack Toole conclude that Tehran had no intention of converting the complex into anything else:

Since the implementation of the JCPOA [in 2016], Iran has been bolstering its ability to build gas centrifuges [in the complex’s aboveground] support area, while maintaining its capability to produce weapons-grade uranium in the tunnel complex [below]. In an ominous development, Iran recently announced the opening of key new centers at the support area.

[Even before the U.S. left the nuclear deal], high levels of activity had been observed at the Fordow support area. Additions to the area include the 2016 installation of a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system and the construction of several building complexes.

[T]here is little reason to believe that Iran ever intended any meaningful conversion of the Fordow tunnel complex into a technical and scientific international center of cooperation, let alone the closely associated support area. This deeply buried gas-centrifuge tunnel complex is too important to Iran, since it can be reconstituted if the deal fails. It can also be reverted . . . to its original purpose of making weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. With a complex specifically built so that it would be extremely difficult to destroy by military action, the international community could face few options if Iran does choose to move to much higher enrichment at Fordow.

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.