During and after the IDF’s brief surgical campaign against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Gaza Strip, “the usual suspects”—as Richard Kemp terms them—rushed to express their dissatisfaction with the Jewish state. The condemnations began with the initial strike that killed Tayseer al-Jabari, the terrorist group’s senior figure in Gaza. Kemp writes:

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland was “deeply concerned” by “the targeted killing today of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader inside Gaza.” . . . Wennesland’s “deep concern” was aggravated by comments from Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” who managed in one tweet both to condemn Israel and contort its actions into a darkly malign parody of reality—so far, so UN. [Without evidence], she claimed that Israel’s actions were to “deter Islamic Jihad’s possible retaliation for its leader’s arrest,” going on to describe the strikes as “flagrant aggression” in breach of international law.

This is pure fiction. Israel has not claimed its operation in Gaza—codenamed Breaking Dawn—is to deter. The government has made it clear that the strikes were to prevent an imminent threat to the Israeli population. It had hard intelligence that PIJ, led by Jabari, was planning attacks across the border from Gaza. Protecting its people from violent external attack is not only permitted under international law, it is the duty of every government. If deterrence of such attacks were possible, Israel would have taken action to deter.

Jabari’s illegal attacks were to be in retaliation for the IDF’s arrest of Bassam al-Saadi in Jenin last week. Saadi is the leader of PIJ in Judea and Samaria, and since May last year he has been consolidating his terrorist bases there, bringing together an assortment of other terror gangs including Hamas, the Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

This left PIJ’s city strongholds, mainly in the north, largely ungovernable by the Palestinian Authority, with their Kalashnikovs calling the shots and PA security forces afraid to enter. The deteriorating situation contributed much to the wave of terrorist attacks against Israelis that [left] nineteen dead in March and April this year.

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.