On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published its most recent report on the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, which lists numerous breaches. The report follows on Tehran’s recent announcement that it has begun enriching uranium up to 5 percent, ignoring the 3.67-percent cap to which it committed itself in 2015. Moreover, the IAEA confirmed Israel’s finding that Iran is storing uranium at a previously undisclosed site. David Albright and Andrea Stricker summarize and analyze these findings and others:

Iran . . . started uranium enrichment at the Fordow fuel-enrichment plant; increased its quantity of low-enriched uranium above the 300kg cap, ramping up monthly production significantly; [and] increased the number and type of centrifuges enriching uranium above the limit of 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges. The total . . . uranium enrichment has increased [to] 36 percent above the enrichment capacity allowed. . . . Iran [also] installed and operated several new, advanced centrifuge types at the [Fordow reactor] not listed as permitted for installation in the nuclear deal.

The breakout time, or the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough [highly enriched] uranium for a nuclear weapon, has shifted downward, . . . from about eight-to-twelve months to six-to-ten months. The breakout time will decrease further as Iran increases its stock of enriched uranium and installs more centrifuges.

Iran is [therefore] increasing its enrichment capacity and its experience in operating advanced centrifuges. While the former is reversible, the latter is not. This knowledge and experience cannot be lost.

Albright and Stricker also note several points the IAEA report overlooks:

The report does not discuss Iran’s denial of access to an inspector at its Natanz [nuclear facility, and] is completely silent on the issue of the IAEA’s investigation of the nuclear archive [discovered last year by the Mossad], and whether this matter could rise to the level of a violation of the nuclear deal itself, under which Iran committed “under no circumstances ever [to] seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.” The existence of the archive may also violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iran’s safeguards agreements.

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.