Critics of the State Department’s determination that Israeli settlements in land acquired during the Six-Day War are not illegal have objected on three distinct grounds: that it constitutes a radical break with 40 years of U.S. foreign-policy consensus, that it misinterprets the law, and that it makes peace less likely. All these objections are wrong, explains Douglas Feith. To the first objection, he notes that in 1981 Ronald Reagan reversed the Carter administration’s position that the settlements were illegal; it was the Obama administration that broke with 35 years of precedent when it tacitly reverted to Carter’s position in 2016. As for the others, Feith writes:

[The Carter administration’s argument] ignored entirely the rights of Jews under the 1922 Palestine Mandate, which called for “close settlement by Jews on the land.” How could those rights have been extinguished by Jordan’s unlawful attack on Israel in 1948 or by Jordan’s . . . West Bank annexation in April 1950, which the United States never recognized? [Even Carter’s advisers] admitted that Jordan was not the legitimate sovereign of the West Bank between 1949 and 1967.

Carter held the conventional view that the Arab-Israeli conflict is in some essential way about the settlements. Trump-administration officials see it differently. Their view evidently is that the conflict reflects the hopes of Israel’s enemies that they can weaken the Jewish state, separate it from its U.S. ally, and ultimately destroy it. What fuels the conflict is the notion that Israel is a vulnerable, alien presence that lacks roots, legitimacy, and moral confidence.

For years, anti-Israel propaganda concentrated so intensely on attacking the settlements as illegal because that line of argument was deeper than a criticism of policy: it called Israel’s legitimacy into question. As Israel’s chief enemies know, asserting that the Jews have no right to live in the West Bank—an important part of the ancient Jewish homeland—calls into question the Jews’ right to have created Israel in the first place.

By moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and declaring the West Bank settlements legal, Trump administration officials are strengthening U.S. ties to Israel. They are systematically contradicting those who argue that Israel can be isolated and destroyed. In the despair of the eliminationists is the best hope for a negotiated peace.

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.