More than a half-year after Donald Trump took office, there is still speculation over whether his administration will jettison the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But, argue Eric Edelman and Charles Wald, this discussion is of secondary importance. The task for the White House is to devise a policy to prevent the Islamic Republic from getting nuclear weapons—something that a “dangerous deal that puts the U.S. in an impossible situation” failed to accomplish.

The Trump administration’s priority should be restoring leverage against Tehran . . . The first step is full enforcement of the JCPOA—including potentially re-imposing suspended sanctions in response to Iranian cheating—as a clear signal that Iran can no longer flout its nuclear obligations. . . .

American policymakers must also rebuild military leverage over Iran. Contingency plans to neutralize Iran’s nuclear facilities, if it materially breaches or withdraws from the deal, should be updated to reflect its growing nuclear infrastructure and military capabilities under the JCPOA. Just as it already appears to be doing against North Korea, the Pentagon must also develop credible capabilities in preparation for a possible shoot-down of future Iranian ballistic-missile tests. U.S. Navy ships must also . . . utilize rules of engagement to defend themselves and the Persian Gulf against rising Iranian harassment.

It is equally important that the United States work with its allies. The recent ten-year Memorandum of Understanding on defense assistance to Israel should be treated as the floor for cooperation, in particular on missile defenses shielding U.S. forces, Israel, and its neighbors from increasingly capable arsenals of Iran and its proxies. . . .

These concentric pressures—none of which violates the JCPOA—will help deter Iran from pursuing nuclear-weapons capability whether it complies, violates, or withdraws from the deal.

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.