Since the Syrian civil war began, Tehran has firmly supported Bashar al-Assad while Ankara has aided those fighting against him. Thus, the Iranian president’s recent condemnation of the Turkish incursion into Syrian Kurdistan should come as no surprise. Yet, argues Doron Itzchakov, while Turkey is now helping Sunni Islamist groups seen by Iran as a threat, the two country’s interests are not entirely at odds:

Tehran does not want to risk its relationship with Ankara, which allows it to circumvent U.S. sanctions and constitutes an essential channel for the supply of Iranian gas to major European countries. . . . Kurdish national aspirations, [moreover], pose significant challenges to all four countries that contain large Kurdish populations, [of which Iran is one]. The precedent of a Kurdish autonomous territory in Syria is unacceptable to the Iranian establishment, which remembers the uprising that led to the establishment of [a short-lived Kurdish polity in Iran] in January 1946. . . .

[In fact], the Turkish offensive could advance Iranian interests. . . . The [recently concluded] defense agreement between the Kurds and the Assad regime, enabling the deployment of Syrian military forces in Syrian Kurdistan, will whet Iran’s appetite and prompt its Revolutionary Guards and their subordinate militias to consolidate their presence in northern Syria, with Assad’s approval. As has happened before, Iranian troops will be disguised by Syrian army uniforms.

The Iranian regime [also] has high hopes that the international community will turn its eyes to Turkish aggression. A global focus on Ankara’s actions will divert attention from Tehran’s attempt to expand its [own] strategic depth, as did the world’s attention to the problem of fighting Islamic State. . . . Iran is likely to make extensive use of the Turkish incursion into northern Syria to expand its hold on the region, with the aim of threatening Israel’s border.

Tehran’s condemnations of the Turkish invasion thus look like mere lip service, as the revolutionary regime may well benefit from the new situation created by the U.S. withdrawal. . . . For Israel, by contrast, this is a zero-sum game, because the promotion of Iranian interests is an inherent threat. Israel should prepare itself for challenges to come.

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.