Hamas isn’t the only Islamist tyranny losing its grip on its subjects. Nowruz, the Persian new year—which fell on March 20—prompted scattered demonstrations in the Iranian provinces for better living conditions and to memorialize those slain in previous rounds of protests. Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh explain why the regime is on its back foot:

Iran’s revolution succeeded best beyond its borders. The Islamic Republic has always sought to subvert its neighbors. It has supported a variety of militants and terrorists and has made the destruction of Israel its leading cause. America, the Great Satan, is an affront to the mullahs. Its culture, which has gone global, entices Iranian youth while its armada patrols Iran’s coastline. . . . In the early decades of this century, they created the most successful imperial enterprise—most bang for the buck—in the Middle East since the British empire.

And then came October 7th and the great undoing.

The Islamic Republic has been humbled in the region by Jews. The sullen citizenry now routinely mocks the theocracy. Iran’s defensive and offensive strategies are in ruins—except the nuclear-weapons program. The bomb is now more essential than it was before—and [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei hasn’t spent tens of billions of dollars on its development, and weathered all the sanctions, to go Japanese. A nuke would ensure the awe elicited by the Islamic Republic in the region.

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.