During his presidency, George H.W. Bush stated that his relations with the Islamic Republic would be governed by the principle of “goodwill begets goodwill,” one that he sought to employ in backchannel negotiations for the release of American hostages. Similar policies were pursued by his successors from both parties, all to no avail. Amir Taheri explains why:

If you help the Islamic Republic improve its economy, the bulk of the proceeds will go to strengthening the apparatus of repression, with the people receiving mere crumbs to keep their mouths shut. At the same time, regime propaganda will spread the tale that it was thanks to its “revolutionary ardor” that the evil foreigners had to offer a few concessions. The “arrogant powers” were retreating under the blows of the new rising power of Islam destined to conquer the whole world.

Worse still, regime propaganda would claim that what the “evil foreigner” was offering presented only a fraction of what he had stolen from the Islamic Republic and that greater struggle against the enemy would force him to offer even more concessions.

Well, if offering help is useless what about doing harm as a means of changing the situation? That, too, wouldn’t work.

Pinprick attacks are easily ducked and any damage they might do is directed away from the regime toward the people. After all, the eight-year war with Iraq didn’t shake the regime but claimed over a million lives, wrecked four Iranian provinces, and produced 3.5 million displaced persons. In April 1988, the U.S. Navy sank the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy after an eighteen-hour sea battle in which the latter played sitting ducks. But that didn’t prevent the regime from claiming it had won the greatest naval victory in Iran’s history and driven the Americans out of “sacred Islamic waters.”

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.