According to the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the UN-linked international nonproliferation watchdog—the Islamic Republic continues to violate the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement. Majid Rafizadeh explains:

[Iran’s] ruling mullahs have increased their total stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 1.1 tons to 1.73 tons as of May 20, 2020. This is approximately eight times more than what the regime was allowed to maintain under the . . . nuclear deal, [under which] Tehran had been permitted to keep a stockpile of 447 pounds . . . and enrich uranium up to 3.67 percent. Iran is now enriching uranium up to the purity of 4.5 percent, and possesses more heavy water, [an important material for some kinds of nuclear reactors], than would have been permitted under the nuclear agreement.

Additionally, Tehran is still not allowing the IAEA to inspect its sites, an ongoing problem that, according to the recent report, has reportedly now raised “serious concerns” for international inspectors.

In addition, [Tehran] has refused to allow the IAEA fully to inspect its [suspected nuclear] sites, particularly those at military bases, where nuclear activities are most likely being carried out. . . . [O]ne of the most dangerous concessions that the Obama administration gave to the Iranian government was surrendering to its demand that military sites would be out of the IAEA’s reach. Because of this concession, at various high-profile sites such as the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, the regime has been free to engage in nuclear activities without the risk of inspection.

Are the U.S. and the UN happy to keep sitting idly by while the mullahs inch dangerously closer to a nuclear weapons breakout?

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.