After eight years of retreat from global leadership, American foreign policy is in shambles, with the country’s adversaries ascendant from Crimea to the Middle East to the Pacific. Abe Greenwald notes that among Barack Obama’s many foreign-policy misjudgments is his belief that Islamic State’s warriors “do no threaten our national existence.”

Can it be that the world’s most bloodthirsty opponents of human liberty—having gone from near nonexistence to virtual statehood in less than five years and having acquired chemical weapons and inspired or trained terrorists inside the United States—do not threaten our national existence? As a matter of our immediate reality, the answer is yes, Islamic State (IS) is not poised to topple the republic. But as a long-term matter, the answer is undoubtedly no: IS and its related groups, if not forcefully opposed, will threaten the United States as a whole.

This could happen in one of two ways. In one, small terrorist attacks will continue or even multiply in the United States. As . . . Americans (and other free peoples) acclimate to the new insecurity caused by further attacks, they will impose upon themselves ever more restrictions on their own freedom. . . .

In the other scenario, IS could begin carrying out spectacular terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. By spectacular, I mean something on the order of 9/11. This is not hard to envision, as IS already has the money, the manpower, and in some cases the advantage of American citizenship to facilitate a coordinated, high-casualty domestic attack. Should this come to pass, then we would inevitably be in an active state of war with another “country,” entailing all the sorrows and upheavals that come with it. Once again, the United States would suffer as a whole. . . .

National purpose is forged in response to a specific challenge—and, then, only when our political leaders recognize that the challenge is so great as to require the galvanization of the country. . . . The United States will reclaim its national purpose when the continued threat of Islamic terrorism becomes too great for another American president to ignore.

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.