On Sunday, an American airman doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, after recording a video denouncing U.S. support for the Jewish state. The twenty-five-year-old, named Aaron Bushnell, did not survive, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) praised his suicide as “honorable.” A short essay in the Nation soon echoed this sentiment and condemned those who argue that the death of an apparently troubled young man shouldn’t be celebrated. Kyle Orton comments:

By far the most intense dispute [about the subject on social media] has been whether Bushnell was disturbed or mentally ill. To the “pro-Palestine” set, this is a terrible calumny against a brave man by liberals, centrists, and other political detritus whose concern for comfort blinds them to the fact some humans hold beliefs so sincerely they are willing to die for them. . . . If the invitation to accept Bushnell as a political martyr is to be accepted, then it is important to be clear what his political cause actually was. For an idea of Bushnell’s politics, we can examine his posts [on the influential online chat site] Reddit since October 7.

“There are no ‘civilians’ or tourists who have no part in the oppression of Palestine,” Bushnell declared. . . . Many of Bushnell’s other post showed a minor obsession with how awful white people are, in the manner so frequently seen in American race discourse, and he had exported this framework to the Holy Land.

We are left, then, with a straight choice. Either we mourn the loss of a troubled young man, a human tragedy of the kind that is all too common at the present time, or we accept that Aaron Bushnell died trying to further a grisly political program that includes support for Hamas, the massacre of Jewish civilians, and the destruction of Israel.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.