On Monday, the State Department announced that it has directed government agencies to cease all scientific and technological cooperation with academic institutions located in territories acquired by the Jewish state during the Six-Day War. Elliott Abrams considers the effects on Ariel University, a West Bank institution with some 17,000 students, a medical school, and a special program for Ukrainian refugees:

First, no one can point to any actual harm done by U.S. support for research at Ariel University or anywhere else in the covered territory. That is because there is no harm, and perhaps there is much good. I’d love to hear administration officials explain to an Israeli Arab or an Ethiopian-origin Israeli or a Ukrainian scholarship student why it was absolutely necessary that funds that might be supporting their research project had to be eliminated.

Second, the argument that supporting research in those locations (east Jerusalem, the Golan, and the West Bank) is “inconsistent with U.S. foreign policy” and thus absolutely foreclosed because those are “final-status issues” [for Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations] is, to be polite, unpersuasive. Suppose there is, eventually, a negotiation that places Ariel in the new state of Palestine (an unrealistic notion to be sure, indeed an impossible one, but play along). How does it harm Palestinians and their new state that there have been and are great research projects underway at that university? Or is it that the Biden administration thinks the existence of such projects makes it less likely that in a negotiation, Israel would be willing to give up the city of Ariel and Ariel University?

Such a position is not mandatory nor is it sensible, so the decision on research grants is something else. It seems like a gratuitous swipe at Israel, or perhaps more accurately Israel’s government—like the refusal to invite Israel’s prime minister to visit the White House. None of these moves helps achieve the administration’s apparent goals. For that at least, I suppose many Israelis will be grateful.

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.