On August 14, France and Britain voted against a U.S.-backed UN Security Council resolution to extend the conventional-arms embargo on the Islamic Republic. The week after, they were joined by Germany in opposing American efforts to invoke the “snapback” mechanism of the 2015 nuclear deal to punish Tehran for its violations. Bobby Ghosh argues that Washington could have done better to get its allies on board, but ultimate responsibility lies with Europe:

Germany, France, and Britain, known collectively as the E3, said in a statement they were “preserving the processes and institutions which constitute the foundation of multilateralism.” That is to miss the wood for the trees. The institutions they claim to be defending are meant to make the world a safer place. Yet despite concurring that giving Iran access to more sophisticated weapons will make the world less safe, the E3 in effect voted to do just that.

[I]n their haste to punish [what they view as] President Trump’s reckless disregard for international norms, they have recklessly disregarded the wellbeing of tens of millions in the Middle East for whom the Islamic Republic represents a clear and constant danger. Iranians, the regime’s longest-suffering victims, make up the largest proportion of those millions. Their Arab neighbors, from Syria and Iraq to those on the opposite shore of the Persian Gulf, are more menaced today than they were yesterday.

The E3 decision will comfort not only Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but also his many agents of mayhem: Bashar al-Assad, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah, the leaders of Hamas, the commanders of Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.

Perhaps Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be abashed by the toasts raised in their direction by this gang of mass murderers, who can now look forward to more money and weapons from Tehran. They may also want to duck the shameful pats on the back from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who can look forward to selling Iran jet fighters, tanks, and missiles. Of course, such pangs of European conscience may well be assuaged by the prospect of billions of dollars in business deals with the Islamic Republic.

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.