As the deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran looms on the horizon, Iran’s Supreme Leader has stepped up his calls for Israel’s annihilation. It is worth recalling that this stance, along with anti-Americanism, is in keeping with Iran’s official ideology. Michael Rubin writes:

As we enter the last two weeks of talks before the self-imposed deadline to conclude a deal with Iran, it now seems that Khamenei is taking his hatred to a new level. Hence, on the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, he tweeted a nine-step plan for the destruction of Israel. This, against the backdrop of current President Hassan Rouhani’s past endorsement of utilizing diplomacy as a means to lull America into complacency before delivering a knock-out blow, and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports suggesting Iran was backtracking on its promise of transparency and nuclear accountability, should raise red flags.

It is also important to analyze with consistency rather than cherry-pick. If President Rouhani’s Rosh Hashanah tweet wishing Jews a happy new year was a sign of real change in Iran, would not Khamenei’s tweet calling for Israel’s eradication be a sign that perhaps hope of such change was premature? After all, within the Islamic Republic’s system, Khamenei trumps Rouhani just as certainly as, in poker, a royal flush trumps a pair of twos. Nor is timing a coincidence. If Rouhani timed his tweet for the Jewish new year, why assume that Khamenei’s timing of his tweet to coincide with the anniversary of one of Germany’s great pogroms was simply a coincidence?

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.