Yesterday, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman reported that Iran has been sending cash to Hizballah via commercial flights to Lebanon. This report makes three things clear: Iran’s usual overland roots through Syria have been at least partially cut off by the fall of the Assad regime; Iran is actively trying to rebuild Hizballah; and Israel must seek to prevent this from happening. Indeed, writes Yossi Mansharof, Iran may also be smuggling weapons by air, “necessitating Israeli countermeasures with American backing.”

The Islamic Republic, moreover, wants to help Hamas restore its military capabilities, and the cease-fire, along with the Israeli withdrawal from the Netzarim corridor, makes doing so easier. Mansharof explains:

The Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s statements to a Hamas delegation in Tehran on Saturday regarding the need to rebuild Gaza leave no doubt about Iran’s ambition to restore Hamas’s infrastructure, which was severely damaged during the war. Experience shows that this reconstruction will focus on Hamas rather than Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel and the U.S. must exert maximum effort to prevent [Iran] from rebuilding Hamas, as its restoration would erase Israel’s military achievements in the war and enable the terrorist organization to carry out another massacre. . . . Egypt, for instance, has proven to be a weak link in this regard, making it essential for the Trump administration to pressure Cairo into taking significant action to cut Hamas off from its sources of support in Iran.

Egypt has been expressing in no uncertain terms its unwillingness to allow Gazan refugees into its territory. Perhaps to persuade Donald Trump to stop pressuring it to do so, Cairo might become more zealous about taking action against Hamas.

With the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program damaged, and its regional influence diminished, the U.S. must now prevent it from recovering, and, if possible, weaken it further. Benjamin Baird argues that it can do both through economic means—if Congress does its part:

Legislation that codifies President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policies into law, places sanctions on Iran’s energy sales, and designates the regime’s proxy armies as foreign terrorist organizations will go a long way toward containing Iran’s regime and encouraging its downfall. . . . Congress has already introduced much of the legislation needed to bring the ayatollah to his knees, and committee chairmen need only hold markup hearings to advance these bills and send them to the House and Senate floors.

They should start with the HR 2614—the Maximum Support Act. What the Iranian people truly need to overcome the regime is protection from the state security apparatus.

Next, Congress must get to work dismantling Iran’s proxy army in Iraq. By sanctioning and designating a list of 29 Iran-backed Iraqi militias through the Florida representative Greg Steube’s Iranian Terror Prevention Act, the U.S. can shut down . . . groups like the Badr Organization and Kataib Hizballah, which are part of the Iranian-sponsored armed groups responsible for killing hundreds of American service members.

Those same militias are almost certainly responsible for a series of drone attacks on oilfields in Iraq over the past few days