Citing statements from several high-ranking security officials from the Netanyahu government, a recent article in the Israeli daily Haaretz argues that the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 from the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic—flawed though it was—only served to bring that country closer to possessing atomic weapons. Eli Lake rejects this conclusion:

The argument is straightforward: President Trump withdrew from the deal and reimposed economic sanctions, but the Iranians held tight. At first slowly, but then brazenly, Iran’s regime began to stockpile more nuclear fuel, upgrade its centrifuges, and advance its nuclear program. In retrospect, the former Israeli officials now say, it would have been better to remain in the deal.

But context is everything. . . . Iran’s recent nuclear advances—the International Atomic Energy Agency announced this week that Iran is enriching uranium to 20 percent at an underground facility—would have been delayed but not prevented under the 2015 deal. The restrictions on uranium enrichment, for example, would have expired in 2031.

Another important piece of context is that in 2017, when Trump took office, Iran was using the financial windfall from the deal—unfrozen assets and the removal of sanctions—to send cash to its meddling proxies in the Middle East, improve its missile program, and intensify its regional war on U.S. allies. At the very least, Trump’s economic pressure made all those efforts more difficult.

More context: Iran’s leaders bet on the Democrats returning to power in 2021, and that’s why they made no serious effort to negotiate when Trump was president. Had Trump been re-elected in 2020, it’s possible the Iranians would have entered negotiations to avoid four more years of economic pain.

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.