Yesterday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by the Iranian foreign minister. In it, Mohammad Javad Zarif declares Wahhabism a “death cult” responsible for most of the Muslim world’s problems and blames Saudi Arabia for spreading this “fanaticism.” All this, from a high official of the repressive Islamic-fundamentalist state that is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Danielle Pletka writes:

Zarif is right. Wahhabism is indeed a danger to the world, a scourge of extremist ideology that successive Saudi regimes have inflicted upon the Muslim (and Christian and Jewish) world. . . . And Zarif is right that the Saudis have used their wealth to hire lobbyists and directly to buy friends in the United States and Europe, which has surely influenced policy in their favor. But then Zarif stops, and it is in his silence where we find the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and sheer Machiavellian predacity of the Tehran regime

Because, you see, Zarif is only concerned with Sunni terrorism, but Iran is the veritable godfather of modern terrorism. . . . And worse yet, unlike the Saudi government, which has actually begun to grapple with its problems and its legacy, Iran has merely doubled and tripled down on its terror model. But let’s review the bidding, shall we?

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, men and women may not consort; women must be veiled (though not with their faces covered). Iran has executed, on average, a person a day in 2016. . . . And forget about being a minority in Iran, where only 50 percent of the population is Persian. . . .

It was the Islamic Republic that created Hizballah and sponsored the groups that kidnapped and murdered Americans through Lebanon’s long civil war. It is the Islamic Republic that funds Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is Iran that props up the murderous Assad regime—you know, the guys that have repeatedly gassed their own people. It is Iran that has assassinated its enemies the world over, and it is Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (and its expeditionary Quds Force) that was responsible, during the Iraq war, for hundreds of U.S. servicemen dying.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.