The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was founded in 1949 to provide humanitarian assistance to Arab refugees from Israel’s war of independence. It has since become a corrupt and bloated institution as well as an enabler of terrorism, and its foremost goal is to maintain its own existence by keeping the descendants of those refugees in poverty in its camps. The only way it can be fixed, argues Bassem Eid, is if Palestinians pressure the Western nations that fund it to demand its reform:

As a proud Palestinian, I must take responsibility for what will happen to our people. We can no longer deny our responsibility for the future of our people. UNRWA, to continue its operation, depends on death and the visual suffering of five million Palestinians who continue to wallow in and around UNRWA facilities. The more Palestinians suffer, the more power goes to UNRWA, which allows it to raise unchecked humanitarian funds and purchase munitions. . . . The only agency that can abolish UNRWA is the UN General Assembly, which has never had the interests of the Palestinian people at heart. After all, the UN rakes in more than $1.2 billion a year as an “incentive” to continue our status as refugees.

A Western defunding of UNRWA [suggested by some] would allow nations like Qatar to enter the vacuum, leaving the West with no leverage over UNRWA policy. The point is [instead] to influence donor nations to reform UNRWA and predicate future aid to UNRWA on reasonable conditions.

With the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program damaged, and its regional influence diminished, the U.S. must now prevent it from recovering, and, if possible, weaken it further. Benjamin Baird argues that it can do both through economic means—if Congress does its part:

Legislation that codifies President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policies into law, places sanctions on Iran’s energy sales, and designates the regime’s proxy armies as foreign terrorist organizations will go a long way toward containing Iran’s regime and encouraging its downfall. . . . Congress has already introduced much of the legislation needed to bring the ayatollah to his knees, and committee chairmen need only hold markup hearings to advance these bills and send them to the House and Senate floors.

They should start with the HR 2614—the Maximum Support Act. What the Iranian people truly need to overcome the regime is protection from the state security apparatus.

Next, Congress must get to work dismantling Iran’s proxy army in Iraq. By sanctioning and designating a list of 29 Iran-backed Iraqi militias through the Florida representative Greg Steube’s Iranian Terror Prevention Act, the U.S. can shut down . . . groups like the Badr Organization and Kataib Hizballah, which are part of the Iranian-sponsored armed groups responsible for killing hundreds of American service members.

Those same militias are almost certainly responsible for a series of drone attacks on oilfields in Iraq over the past few days