Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes, both former members of President Obama’s National Security Council, have complained publicly that the current president’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 agreement with Iran “undermines the credibility of the United States” and weakens its reputation. But, as Jack Goldsmith explains, the deal had no binding legal status, and these complaints are without merit:

Presidents have the clear authority to make nonbinding political commitments. That is why I defended the legality of the Iran deal (as opposed to its wisdom) at the time [it was being concluded]. But whenever a president makes an agreement as a political commitment rather than as a binding agreement under international law, he is making a tradeoff. On the one hand, the president can avoid the need for approval from the Senate or Congress and make the international deal despite domestic opposition. On the other hand, a political commitment has no binding force under international or domestic law—and there is thus a danger that it will not be honored by a subsequent president. . . .

The Obama team was aware of this tradeoff, but it knew it had no chance to secure approval for the Iran deal from Congress. . . . For Obama to join the agreement that he thought so crucial to the fate of the world, he needed a constitutional mechanism that avoided the need for approval by Congress: . . . easier to make, easier to break. . . .

[Y]ou don’t get to make an enormously consequential international deal in the face of opposition from Congress, skirt the need for congressional consent by making the agreement nonbinding under domestic and international law, and then complain about a withdrawal from the fragile nonbinding agreement you made when a new president who ran on the issue and won does what a majority of Congress wanted at the time.

Agreements that have the approval of the Senate or Congress tend to be longer-lasting and more durable. . . . The Obama administration . . . pledged the reputation of the nation, even though it knew the Iran deal was nonbinding and lacked approval among the nation’s elected representatives. If the United States’ reputation for upholding agreements takes a hit, the responsibility for that outcome lies squarely with the original decision by the Obama administration to make the hugely consequential deal on its own.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.