The Islamic Republic has been one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. As its rulers try to cover for their own mishandling of the outbreak, David T. Glenn and Ari Cicurel argue that America should try to bring Iranians the truth:

Iran’s leaders are . . . pushing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Ayatollah Khamenei, among others, has argued it is an American-made biological weapon. Likewise, Khamenei refuses U.S. aid, speculating that American “medicine is a way to spread the virus.” Both arguments are absurd, yet Iran continues to feed these lies to its people and spread them internationally, particularly online.

The United States must strive to reveal the truth about the Islamic Republic’s misdeeds by coordinating comprehensive technological and media responses with international partners. First, providing everyday Iranians with the tools to get truthful information weakens the regime. Much as the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty offered alternative programming in Soviet states during the cold war, supplying greater Internet access in Iran would decrease the effectiveness of false narratives.

Likewise, tailored cyber operations can advance policy objectives to disable or minimize the regime’s ability to spread false information. Introducing measured technological constraints on [Iran’s state-sponsored broadcasting network] can decrease its ability to disseminate the inaccurate narrative about the virus.

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.