Although Congress was unable to stop the nuclear deal, it can still shift U.S. policy toward Iran in the right direction, writes Ray Takeyh. It should take its cue from the 1970s, when Congress lobbied the executive branch to press the Soviet Union on its human-rights abuses, and the 1980s, when it imposed sanctions on South Africa:

One of the curious aspects of the Obama presidency is its marked reluctance to criticize the Islamic Republic for its domestic abuses. In pursuit of its arms-control agreement, the administration convinced itself that it had to be deferential to the sensibilities of Iran’s paranoid rulers. As the White House exempted itself from judgment, the Islamist regime jailed dissidents, rigged elections, censored the media, and set records for executions. Most recently it “convicted” Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian on trumped-up charges.

No one has a greater ability to inspire dissidents than an American president embracing their cause. . . . But absent any such effort from President Barack Obama, congressmen and senators should use their own podiums to denounce Iran’s human-rights violations and highlight the cases of dissidents. Congress should spearhead its own set of sanctions, such as designating the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. The Democrats who voted for the Iran deal and the White House that pressed them to do so have all insisted that a nuclear deal does not mean ignoring Iran’s domestic repression. It is time to call both the White House and the Democratic caucus to account.

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.