While the nuclear agreement with Tehran was sold to the American people through elaborate deceptions, writes Ben Cohen, its effects are all too real. Among them is the fact that eight years of efforts to realign the U.S. with the Islamic Republic have created policies that will be difficult to reverse:

The expectation that the [deal] would lead to a new era of Iranian power has come to pass. The Iranians do not have carte blanche to do as they please, but any restraints on them are likely to be imposed by the Russians rather than the Americans.

What started as a delusion stoked by the Obama administration has now become a strategic point of departure. The two key measures for dealing with Iranian aggression—robust sanctions and military action—have virtually disappeared at a time when the war in Syria is intensifying and fears of a new Hizballah assault on Israel are increasing. For that reason, the question of why so many influential Americans bought into the Iran delusion will be superseded by a much more urgent one: how to stop the Iranian advance during the next American presidency.

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.