In 2016, Xiyue Wang, an American doctoral student visiting Iran on a research trip, was arrested on spurious charges of espionage. He has since been in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Last week, his wife led a group of other relatives of hostages and political prisoners held by the Islamic Republic in an appeal to the UN General Assembly, which was then convening in New York, to pressure the mullahs to set their loved ones free. Europe, writes Eli Lake, has no interest in doing so:

The European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini and the Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif this week announced their plans for a new financial instrument that in theory would allow European companies doing business with Iran to evade U.S. sanctions. Although most European businesses have already announced plans to divest from Iran, the EU wants to keep the Iran nuclear deal alive. . . .

[B]y making the nuclear deal the main topic of discussion, the Europeans are giving Iran tacit permission to continue funneling weapons to militias and terror groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The message is clear if indirect: don’t worry about releasing political prisoners, please just don’t enrich more uranium. . . .

U.S. policy, [by contrast], is to punish Iran economically for its regional aggression. President Trump himself has said he is open to talks with Iran’s leaders, but that does not look likely. And while European leaders will make boilerplate condemnations of Iran’s interference in Syria and its detention of dual nationals, they have focused most of their diplomatic energies on the nuclear deal. . . .

What will it take to rescue Iran’s political prisoners? The same thing it will take to end Iran’s support for Syria’s dictator: a wholesale change in Iranian behavior. And the best chance for that happening is for Iranians to change their regime.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.