Over the weekend, the Iran-backed Yemenite Houthi rebels used drones to attack two major Saudi oil-processing sites. These attacks are part of a much larger pattern of provocative Iranian behavior—including further violations of the 2015 nuclear agreement—likely in response to increased American sanctions. But, argues Michael Pregent, Tehran is acting out of desperation, and Washington must make it continue to pay a price for its behavior:

Nothing is working. The Islamic Republic’s Lebanese proxy, Hizballah, is not ready for a repeat of its 2006 war [with Israel]. Iranian rockets, missiles, and drones, which are stored in depots in Iraq and Syria, are [meanwhile] being hit by Israeli airstrikes. Iran thought Russia’s S-300 and S-400 air defense systems were going to protect its offensive capabilities in Syria and that the U.S. would keep Israel from conducting airstrikes in Iraq—it was wrong in both cases.

[For their part], Iraqis are not rallying to the flag. They are not protesting these strikes, and that says a lot about the general population’s distaste for Iranian influence and Tehran’s militias in Iraq.

The status quo of the last 40 years was to reward Iran for its provocations, with the Islamic Republic redeploying the same tactics over and over again because it was rewarded over and over again. This time it is different.

The U.S. should do all it can to help its allies absorb Iran’s attacks and make them unsuccessful. [It should also] persuade France not to pay [the Islamic Republic what amounts to a] $15-billion bribe, and hold Baghdad accountable for not acting to curb malign Iranian activity. It must also punish Iran for providing lethal aid to the Taliban while the latter kills Americans and negotiates with Washington in bad faith.

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.