In the past several years, Tehran has transformed Lebanon, Syria, and the Houthi-dominated parts of Yemen into client states, and has come close to doing the same with Iraq. Meanwhile, Tajikistan, which in 2015 began to grow close to Saudi Arabia and has carried out a massive crackdown on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood has now also showed signs of reverting to the Iranian sphere of influence. James Dorsey writes:

Driving the patching up of differences [between Tehran and Dushanbe] is the fact that landlocked Tajikistan, like its neighbor Uzbekistan, needs access to Iranian ports, including the Indian-backed one in Chabahar at the top of the Arabian Sea, which offer the cheapest and shortest transportation options. Iran’s attractiveness to Central Asian nations increases the Islamic Republic’s importance to the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s infrastructure-, transportation-, and energy-driven plan to connect the Eurasian landmass to Beijing.

In nearby Uzbekistan, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been slowly moving his country into the Iranian orbit as well:

Already a vital node for Uzbek exports and imports, Iran is written all over Mirziyoyev’s new transportation-infrastructure plans. A decree issued in late 2017 identified Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Oman, China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan, and three trans-Afghan corridors as key to the . . . Uzbek plans [that] envision extending [a] rail line being extended to the Afghan city of Herat, from where it would branch out to the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, and Bazargan.

Thus, despite U.S. sanctions, Iran may be outmaneuvering Saudi Arabia in the contest for influence in these Muslim-majority countries.

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.