Currently consisting of 56 states in addition to the Palestinian Authority, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) began with an effort in 1969 to blame Israel and “Zionists”—falsely—for setting fire to al-Aqsa Mosque. The group, which touts itself as “the collective voice of the Muslim world,” has made a consistent habit of condemning the Jewish state, and to a lesser extent India, for supposed abuses. It also supports boycotts of Israel and sharply condemned Danish caricatures in 2005. One country it has not condemned is China, which is currently seeking to extirpate Islam from its northwestern territory by the most brutal of means. Georgia Gilholy writes:

This week an Organization of Islamic Cooperation delegation visited China. It offered slavish praise and deference to the state responsible for atrocities against millions of mostly Muslim Uighurs, which a British tribunal designated as genocide. . . . In a July 2019 statement, over a dozen OIC member states went so far as to cosign a letter that “commended China’s achievements in the field of human rights.”

The key factor behind the OIC’s double standards is obvious: money. The attempt to decimate and subjugate the Uighurs is an informal component of the “Belt and Road” Initiative. This program is scheduled to pour over $8 billion into a transcontinental “belt” of overland economic corridors. This “belt” and its corresponding maritime “road” will encompass a major chunk of the world’s Muslim-majority nations from Sudan to Indonesia.

Easy cash, however, is just one part of the story. Just as the dictators of Russia, Cuba, and North Korea collaborate with China on the international stage in a bid to normalize authoritarianism at large, administrations across the Muslim world likewise seek to reap the same nefarious rewards.

Cunning employment of moral relativism is at the heart of this arrangement. When engaging with democracies, OIC representatives gleefully employ the language of liberal human rights. When brown-nosing other autocracies and dispensing domestic law, however, these principles are mysteriously absent.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”