At his recent speech at the UN, the Palestinian president retold his usual historical lies, but he also went a step further. It should now be clear to anyone who still had doubts that he is not and will not be a reliable partner for negotiations. And that’s not even the worst of it. Michael Oren writes:

In his previous General Assembly speeches, Mahmoud Abbas denied the Jewish people’s historical connection to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. But this time he conveyed an unprecedented message: he does not want negotiations–not even American-brokered talks–and is not interested in a durable peace based on security arrangements and mutual recognition. The fact that Israel doesn’t have a partner for peace was accepted by the Israeli public a long time ago. But now we are forced to acknowledge a new fact: that Abbas poses a danger that may be revealed as strategically more serious than the tactical dangers posed by Hamas.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.