Among the many faults of the 2015 nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic are its sunset clauses, which specify that various restrictions on Iran will expire stepwise, so that by 2030 none will remain. The first to expire is an international ban on the sale of certain conventional weapons to Tehran, which will “sunset” in November of this year. Because the deal was ratified into international law by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the Security Council has the power to extend the embargo. The State Department now seeks to do just that, explains Benny Avni, but it may face opposition:

Russia, which is eager to renew legal arms sales to Iran, would likely veto the U.S.-proposed resolution—if it ever comes to a vote. China might join, and America’s European allies that cling to the deal would need a lot of convincing before they agree to tweak any part of the 2015 resolution. So [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s attempt to extend the arms embargo could fail, but then America just might get even more bold, using Resolution 2231’s self-destruct mechanism. Known as the “snapback” option, the resolution provided such a path to help the Obama administration sell [the deal] at home.

If Iran were ever to cheat on its obligations, promised top officials in the Obama administration, we’d at any time be able to end the deal and reimpose full sanctions. Further, they added, no one at the UN could stand in our way. Hence the “snapback” mechanism that, according to the UN resolution, allows any of the original parties to the [agreement] to “reimpose unilateral and multilateral nuclear-related sanctions in the event of Iran non-performance,” as Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate at the time.

Indeed, according to Resolution 2231, the original parties to the nuclear deal—Russia, Communist China, France, Britain, Germany, and America (as well as the European Union and Iran)—can unilaterally launch a process leading to re-imposition of prior strict Security Council sanctions.

Hence, if a new resolution fails, a snapback of all international sanctions must proceed. The 2015 UN resolution had legally bound America to a deal that the Senate wouldn’t endorse. Ending the UN endorsement of the Iran deal would return the power of making such deals to the representatives of the American people. That in and of itself would be grounds for forcing a snapback.

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.