If Joe Biden wins the presidency in November, it is likely that his administration will try to negotiate an updated version of the 2015 nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic. Despite this possibility, there is still much that the current administration can do now to increase pressure on the ayatollahs. Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz write:

For starters, the administration should swiftly blacklist the Islamic Republic’s entire financial sector, thereby expelling the remaining thirteen Iranian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system. . . . The administration should also [fill other] gaps in the U.S. sanctions regime. This should include more sanctions targeting the regime’s support for terrorism, its ballistic-missile program, and its human-rights abuses and corruption.

Republicans should also make clear, through the passage of a congressional resolution, that the lifting of sanctions by a Biden administration would be temporary and that such a move does not change the market’s views of Tehran’s illicit conduct. International companies should expect to lose their investments in Iran if Republicans retake power in four years and reinstate all sanctions.

Moreover, the effects of such sanctions would improve Washington’s bargaining position if any president were to reopen nuclear negotiations. Nagel and Dubowitz also urge a possible future Democratic White House to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 2015 agreement:

First, the U.S. should reinforce the efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), [which in turn] should continue its demand for full Iranian compliance with existing agreements, including the one agreed to last week that gave the agency visitation rights at two sites where the Iranians allegedly concealed illicit nuclear activities in violation of their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations.

While the IAEA pursues its mandate, the intelligence services of the U.S., Israel, and other Western powers should continue clandestine efforts to stop Iran’s illegal nuclear program and terrorist activities. . . . The U.S., Israel, and others possibly involved should continue to hit Iranian nuclear facilities and missile and military infrastructure, as well as Iranian and proxy forces in the region. The Obama administration made the mistake of tying the hands of U.S. and foreign intelligence services. That’s leverage Washington must use against Tehran.

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.