On January 8, in response to the American airstrikes that killed Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Republic’s forces abroad, Tehran launched 22 missiles at two military instillations in Iraq, causing neither Iraqi nor American casualties. Jonathan Spyer notes that, from the ayatollahs’ perspective, an appropriate act of vengeance would have involved the killing of a U.S. figure of similar prominence to Suleimani, or, failing that, a considerable number of more junior personnel. Yet they chose not to attempt such an attack:

Iran has both assets and an ample “target bank” in the local area for the carrying out of such an attack. . . . The problem was not military or logistical in nature, [however]. It was political and strategic. An attack of sufficient magnitude to settle the account over Suleimani would almost certainly be one that would invite further, wider American retribution, and begin the descent to a direct clash between the U.S. and Iran, which Iran could not possibly win, and which could potentially mean the destruction of much that Iran has gained in the region over the last decade. Iran thus had to choose between facing destruction or accepting a somewhat humiliating outcome.

[T]he attacks of January 8 appear to have been formulated and carried out in order to produce precisely the result that they did—namely, a large amount of noise and smoke, so as to enable Tehran to claim that it had taken retribution for the death of Suleimani. And no U.S. casualties, so that Iran could avoid the escalation that these would have made inevitable.

Of course, Iranian efforts to expel the U.S. from Iraq will continue. The Iranian calculus at this point may well have included the assumption that the current administration wants out of the Middle East, and therefore should not be provoked into staying. . . . But the latest round of hostilities indicates that those who helm the Iranian bid for regional hegemony are aware of their drastic limitations in the military arena, are not suicidal, and are capable of formulating and implementing policy in line with the prevailing realities.

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.