On May 9, the head of one of the many Tehran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq gave a speech accusing Israel of support for Islamic State and, moreover, threatened that once his group and its allies had vanquished their Sunni enemies, they would turn to the task of destroying the Jewish state. These threats, writes Jonathan Spyer, should not be taken as mere bluster, especially amidst the rising tensions in the Persian Gulf:

[T]he area encompassing Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon today constitutes a single arena from an Iranian operational point of view. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) [and its proxies] have freedom of action in each of these areas. . . .

Iran is making use of its Iraqi militia clients to deploy short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) in the deserts of western Iraq—with the intention that these could be launched against Israel at a time of Iran’s choosing. . . . Tehran has also established facilities for missile production in western Iraq, and is employing Iraqi citizens to carry out this work. . . .

The ability of Iran to operate a de-facto contiguous line of control across Iraq, and thence to Syria, Lebanon, and the borders with the Golan Heights, is thus not under serious doubt. It appears that Tehran has begun to station SRBMs along this route, directed at Israel, and manned by the IRGC-directed militias—an arrangement intended to provide Iran with deniability in the event of their being used. . . . In the remote deserts of western Iraq, Iran’s servants are busily at work preparing a new front against Israel.

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.