Thus far, the Islamic Republic has been the Middle Eastern country hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus seems to have been carried there directly from China by Iran’s Mahan Air, which, although nominally private, is deeply intertwined with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Moreover, writes Michael Segall, the airline has likely spread the disease to other countries while abetting the ayatollahs’ military ambitions:

On January 31, Iran officially suspended all flights to and from China in order to slow down the spread of the disease. Mahan Air, however, continued flying to and from China, seemingly ignoring the government’s instructions as well as harsh criticism in the local media.

The airline’s involvement in terror and helping to promote the regional and international activity of the Quds Force—the special-operations, terrorism, and subversion arm of the IRGC—were already exposed a decade ago. At that time Mahan Air was blacklisted several times by the U.S. Treasury Department for helping the Quds Force ferry IRGC fighters and advisers, foreign fighters, weapons, and logistical assistance to the different arenas in which Iran meddles, particularly Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, while also helping to further Iran’s plans to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Mahan Air’s continued flights to China after the flight ban and the Iranian government’s own prohibition on flights were what caused the spread of the coronavirus to several Middle Eastern countries to which the airline kept flying as well. [From] the end of January to mid-March, Mahan Air operated hundreds of flights between Iran and Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Syria—countries with a considerable IRGC presence and activity.

The first coronavirus cases in Syria and in Lebanon arrived on Mahan Air flights. Some of the passengers were Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon and Syria who had visited the holy Iranian city of Qom, which was one of the first and main centers of infection, and some were Hizballah and IRGC fighters. . . . In Lebanon the first coronavirus case was reported on February 21. It was a female pilgrim who had returned on Mahan Air’s flight W51152 from a pilgrimage to Qom.

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.