Due to the ayatollahs’ gross mismanagement, COVID-19 has taken a particularly harsh toll on the Islamic Republic. Tehran’s propagandists, however, have claimed that U.S. sanctions have hamstrung the country’s ability to fight the disease and to obtain the necessary medical supplies for the task—an argument echoed in the American media and by former Obama-administration officials. But this is nonsense, write David Adesnik and Saeed Ghasseminejad:

During the first full year after the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions [in 2018], total EU exports to Iran fell by nearly half, while pharmaceutical exports fell by just over 5 percent. Despite assertions that U.S. sanctions have worsened the coronavirus epidemic in Iran, the data do not indicate that Iran has had difficulty maintaining its imports of pharmaceuticals.

As required by law, U.S. sanctions on Iran have never prohibited trade in food, medicine, or other humanitarian goods. . . . While acknowledging that [this is the case, some] media reports allege that Western firms’ fear of sanctions create a “chilling effect” that creates an aversion even to legitimate transactions. Despite anecdotal evidence of such concerns, the official data provide a very different picture.

[Even] the single-digit decline in Iranian pharmaceutical purchases in 2019 may just be noise in the data with no relationship to the return of sanctions. Nonetheless, the U.S. Treasury Department has partnered with the Swiss government to open a special channel for humanitarian trade with Iran, which may help avert a potential decline in licit commerce. At the end of January, the U.S. and Swiss governments announced the completion of the first transactions through the special channel, consisting of 2.3 million euros of cancer and transplant drugs.

Of course, one might object that even if Tehran can still obtain medical supplies, sanctions have so depleted its public coffers that it cannot properly muster the necessary public-health response. But even if this were true, Iran could shore up its financial situation by ceasing to spend millions of dollars developing nuclear weapons, funding terrorist groups and militias, and building rockets to shoot at American soldiers.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.