This week, the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is holding one of its five yearly meetings, where, no doubt, it will address a recent report by the agency’s experts detailing Tehran’s refusal to cooperate with inspections. Jacob Nagel and Andrea Sticker comment:

A key conclusion from the IAEA’s report, issued on June 5, . . . is that since the end of January 2020 Tehran has refused the IAEA access to two nuclear sites of concern and declined to answer questions about a third. . . . Certain states, such as Russia, are supporting Iran’s evasions, arguing that the IAEA’s investigation relates merely to [past violations]. Yet the new information obtained by the IAEA warrants questions . . . as to whether activities with military nuclear applications continue today and all nuclear materials in Iran [are being put solely to] peaceful uses.

Perhaps most suspiciously, Iran continues to destroy sites of concern and move or hide equipment and materials. There is no statute of limitations in Iran’s safeguards agreements on investigating allegations or suspicions of undeclared nuclear material.

The E3, or the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, which have so far been quiet on the matter, should stand firmly behind the IAEA [in condemning Iran’s noncompliance]. The E3 remain harshly critical of the United States for withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal . . . and blame Washington for Iran’s subsequent breaches of the accord. Yet Iran’s violations [of the Nonproliferation Treaty and its subsequent safeguards] represent breaches of entirely separate agreements that long predate the [the deal], so the E3 cannot point a finger at Washington.

It is past time for the world to unite around the threat of Iran’s nuclear program. This should start with the IAEA’s board of governors recognizing that Tehran’s nuclear program is not peaceful. The world should demand full answers.

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.