With Hizballah on the ropes, Tehran risks losing one of its most important strategic assets. Yet it has so far refrained from retaliating against Israel either directly or through a massive, coordinated strike from its other proxy forces. It still hasn’t even carried out its dramatic threats to avenge the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Farhad Rezaei explains:

First, the regime is facing several crises at home, with the most pressing being a severe economic crisis that has persisted since the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. . . .  Sustaining a war effort against Israel would require a strong economy, and given the depth of Iran’s current economic crisis, the regime would struggle to afford such a conflict.

The ongoing crisis has ignited widespread riots across the country, with the most recent unrest in 2022–2023 resulting in the deaths of over 630 Iranians at the hands of the regime’s security forces.

That unrest, Rezaie observes, is indicative of the Islamic Republic’s crisis of legitimacy and the rapidly diminishing faith in the regime:

A regime facing such a deep legitimacy crisis at home would struggle to engage in a direct conflict with Israel, as sustaining public support during a war would be highly challenging. . . . In fact, during past incidents, such as the alleged Israeli attack on Iran’s major gas pipelines in March 2024, which severely disrupted vital services, regime leaders were deeply concerned that additional Israeli strikes could further destabilize the country and cripple the already fragile economy.

The regime also understands that engaging in a direct war against Israel would likely drag the United States into the conflict—a war in which Iran would ultimately be the loser.

In 2000, the late Hassan Nasrallah famously likened Israel, which Hizballah had just driven out of Lebanon, to “a spider’s web” that looks elaborate but can easily be swatted away. While the October 7 attacks appeared to support that characterization, it is now Iran that is beginning to look like a spider’s web. That at least is the optimistic interpretation. The alternative is that Iran is just waiting until it can finish building some nuclear bombs.

Commenting on the wave of anti-Hamas demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, Seth Mandel writes:

Gazans have not have been fully honest in public. There’s a reason for that. To take just one example, Amin Abed was nearly beaten to death with hammers for criticizing Hamas. Abed was saved by bystanders, so presumably the intention was to finish him off. During the cease-fire, Hamas members bragged about executing “collaborators” and filmed themselves shooting civilians.

Which is what makes yesterday’s protests all the more significant. To protest Hamas in public is to take one’s life in one’s hands. That is especially true because the protests were bound to be filmed, in order to get the message out to the world. The reason the world needs to hear that message is that Westerners have been Hamas’s willing propaganda tools. The protests on campus are not “pro-Palestinian,” they are pro-Hamas—and the people of Gaza are Hamas’s victims.