Although the recent Security Council resolution condemning Israel—unlike those produced by other UN organs—has actual legal force, the next American president has the ability to limit its damage, as Abraham Sofaer argues:

[Donald Trump, once] president, can repudiate any international agreement. . . . He should thus inform the UN secretary-general before his first [required report on Resolution 2334] on March 23, 2017, that the U.S. repudiates the resolution—that the U.S. will veto any effort to enforce its conclusions. He should also seek legislation imposing trade sanctions on states that rely on the resolution to discriminate against Israel, as the U.S. did successfully against the Arab boycott.

Sofaer also refutes the claim of Obama administration officials, and their defenders in the media, who insist that the American decision not to veto the resolution is consistent with established policy:

Ambassador Samantha Power claimed U.S. presidents [including Ronald Reagan] have all been against expanding settlements. But no administration has ever supported calling all Israeli settlements “flagrant violations of international law,” not even the Obama administration, which vetoed a similar resolution in 2011.

President Reagan regarded the settlements as “legal,” and most other presidents have refrained from relying on inapposite principles of international law, shunning such ineffective hectoring. No administration has ever claimed Israel, as an “occupying power” during “war” must treat Palestine as a state. . . .

The abstention, in short, was a shameful act openly touted as punishment for Israel’s failure to abide by a U.S. policy that set back the prospects of peace. The Trump administration must repudiate Resolution 2334 in order to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, by recognizing that Israel’s settlements are not an obstacle to peace if peace were genuinely pursued.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”