On May 2, the White House will cease granting sanction waivers to eight countries that have until now been allowed to purchase oil from the Islamic Republic without penalty. This measure, combined with the series of economic steps taken by the Trump administration, could severely erode Tehran’s ability to export terror and bloodshed, writes Mohammed Alyahya:

[One] point often ignored is the value sanctions have in eroding the regime’s resources. . . . Iran’s extensive regional proxy network—comprising several dozen militias in Iraq and Syria, two in Bahrain, one in Yemen, and its flagship proxy in Lebanon, Hizballah—relies on Iranian funding to sustain operations and buy loyalty. The regime cannot fund these groups with its own currency. It needs U.S. dollars, and because of sanctions, it does not have enough. . . .

This leaves the Iranian regime with two choices. The first: to capitulate to the Trump administration’s list of twelve demands, many of which would strip the revolutionary regime of its raison d’être, and channel the regime’s resources exclusively toward the betterment of the people of Iran. The second: to provoke conventional war in the Gulf or with Israel, an option that would put the Iranian regime at an extreme disadvantage.

With poor conventional military capabilities, Iran does not stand a chance in an all-out conventional war with its well-equipped Arab neighbors, let alone with the U.S. . . . Iran could attack Israel rather than its Gulf opponents in an effort to reshuffle the regional cards. . . . Although Israel [in that eventuality] would likely incur a level of damage and loss of life it has not witnessed since 1948, Iran’s most dependable ally, Hizballah, will surely take a significant mauling in such a war. While it may not be fully destroyed, it is unlikely that Hizballah would be able to rebuild as quickly and at the same scale as after the 2006 war to once again pose a threat to Israel, which would undermine Iranian deterrence.

The regime will [thus] soon find itself in a position where it must choose between firing its weapons and laying them down. If the Iranian regime chooses not to make concessions, it will be forced to martyr itself.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.