Between March 28, 1944 and her capture by the SS on August 4, Anne Frank began methodically revising her diary—with the hope of publishing it as a book after the war ended. She was inspired to do so, Ruth Franklin explains, by a radio broadcast from the Dutch government in exile calling on citizens to help preserve materials that could be used to document the country’s experience under Nazi occupation. “But, seriously,” she wrote in response to the broadcast, “it would be quite funny ten years after the war if we Jews were to tell how we lived and what we ate and talked about here.” Franklin goes on to note what can be learned from the revisions of the diary, and the various versions that have been preserved in manuscript form:

To begin with, Otto Frank, [Anne’s father], has been bizarrely and unfairly vilified as the censor of Anne’s diary, when in fact he was nothing of the kind. But [understanding the details of the diary’s composition is] also important for historical reasons. In an entry dated October 9, 1942, Anne discusses what she and the others knew about the fate of the Dutch Jews who were being deported: “We assume that most of them are murdered. The English radio speaks of their being gassed.” Some historians have pointed to this entry as evidence that Dutch people at the time knew of the existence of Auschwitz. But Anne added the line about gassing in version B, meaning that it was written after March 1944 and probably as late as May or June, and can’t be relied on as a source for fall 1942.

Finally, the edits are important because they affect the way we understand Anne and her final creation, which wasn’t a conventional diary per se—a series of entries written in chronological order—but, as Francine Prose has described it, “a memoir in diary form.” In reworking her book from a private text into a public one, she transformed it from an intimate chronicle of her thoughts and feelings into a text of witness: one written by a Jew who wanted the world to know of her persecution by the Nazis. . . . It wasn’t a “found object,” as some critics have assumed, but a testimony deliberately composed. To suggest otherwise misunderstands Anne’s intention and denies her agency.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.