The UN General Assembly is considering a measure that would grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) the “rights and privileges” of a United Nations member state. Eugene Kontorovich explains that:

under the UN charter, the Security Council must authorize any new UN member-states, and it vetoed the PA’s membership bid again just a few weeks ago. Knowing it has automatic support from the undemocratic majority at the General Assembly, the PA has come up with an end-run: a resolution that gives it privileges on “an equal footing with member states.”

Mahmoud Abbas, [who] runs the Palestinian Authority, has long sought to establish international recognition of a “state of Palestine” to avoid having to negotiate with, and make any concessions to, Israel. The goal is to create a diplomatic fait accompli.

The move would also likely violate the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority. Yet, writes Kontorovich, there could be unexpected consequences, as the measure “provides the legal basis for a president—a future President Donald Trump, say—to . . . end all U.S. funding to the world body,” since “Congress passed two laws in the early 1990s that ban any funding to the United Nations or its affiliated agencies if they give the PA member-state status.”

At the moment, Hizballah’s superiors in Tehran probably aren’t giving much thought to the militia’s next move. More likely, they are focused on the fact that their country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, along with the foreign minister, may have been killed in a helicopter crash near the Iran-Azerbaijan border. Iranians set off fireworks to celebrate the possible death of this man known as “butcher of Tehran” for his role in executing dissidents. Shay Khatiri explains what will happen next:

If the president is dead or unable to perform his duties for longer than two months, the first vice-president, the speaker of the parliament, and the chief justice, with the consent of the supreme leader, form a council to choose the succession mechanism. In effect, this means that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will decide [how to proceed]. Either a new election is called, or Khamenei will dictate that the council chooses a single person to avoid an election in time of crisis.

Whatever happens next, however, Raisi’s “hard landing” will mark the first chapter in a game of musical chairs that will consume the Islamic Republic for months and will set the stage not only for the post-Raisi era, but the post-Khamenei one as well.

As for the inevitable speculation that Raisi’s death wasn’t an accident: everything I have read so far suggests that it was. Still, that its foremost enemy will be distracted by a succession struggle is good news for Israel. And it wouldn’t be terrible if Iran’s leaders suspect that the Mossad just might have taken out Raisi. For all their rhetoric about martyrdom, I doubt they relish the prospect of becoming martyrs themselves.