In 2021, David Miller, a sociologist obsessed by a fanatical hatred of Israel and its Jewish supporters, was fired by Britain’s University of Bristol for failing to “meet the standards of behavior we expect from our staff.” Miller, who since then has worked as a regular commentator on Iranian state-sponsored television, sued for wrongful termination. On Monday, the court ruled in his favor on the grounds that his “anti-Zionism” constitutes a “philosophical belief” for which he cannot be legally fired.

Dave Rich clarifies what exactly these beliefs were:

Miller believes that every Jewish organization, synagogue, school, charity, or youth club anywhere in the world that has a connection to Israel must be “dismantled.” He blithely peddles anti-Semitic tropes and treats all but the small minority of Jews who wholly reject Israel as an enemy to be “defeated.” His beliefs, were they to be put into effect, amount to an all-out assault on global Jewish life as currently constituted.

But, as Melanie Phillips explains, Miller did not lose his job because his employer decided that his anti-Zionism amounted to anti-Semitism:

It was Miller who claimed that he was being hounded by “Zionists” because of his views. But the university didn’t find that. It didn’t fire him because of his views about Jews or Israel. In its disciplinary hearing in September 2021, it found that his actions towards students amounted to gross misconduct for which he should be fired.

The hearing was conducted by the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the time, Professor Jane Norman. In her dismissal notice, she made no reference to Miller’s anti-Zionism. She concluded instead that his sackable offence was to have grossly breached the university’s rules of conduct. . . . He had singled out students and their societies for criticism which was an “abuse of power”; he had connected one such society to “violence, racism, ethnic cleansing, and making other protected groups feel unsafe”; his tone had been “inappropriate” because he had been “seeking to proselytize and convert others” to his cause “and/or to provoke a public reaction”; and he had not shown “any shred of insight into why others might have found your words reprehensible.”

One has to ask, therefore, why the tribunal was so keen to make anti-Zionism the central element of its ruling.

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 Luttwack 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.