Khamenei’s Terms

Following its announcement of a “framework” for a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration spent a month pledging it would prevent Tehran from ever getting a bomb. The major problem with this sales job is that the Iranians think the terms of the still-unwritten pact are very different from the ones that Washington laid out. No less a source than the country’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in April that economic sanctions would have to be lifted permanently the day of signing the deal. He also made it clear that he will never allow intrusive inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, let alone surprise visits by United Nations experts. But President Obama told Congress that sanctions would be lifted only gradually and that a tough inspections regime is a prerequisite for the deal’s being finalized. If the Iranians refuse to budge on these key points, the president will either be forced to walk away from the deal or give in to Khamenei, just as he has every time before in the talks. The former seems a long shot.

No Such Thing as ‘Snap Back’

The other key sticking point is the administration’s promise that if Iran were violating the deal, sanctions would “snap back” into place immediately. Two problems here. One: Such a policy will rely on Obama’s willingness to believe the truth about Iran’s cheating even if doing so means acknowledging the collapse of the fantasy on which the president’s foreign-policy legacy has come to rest. Two: Even if Obama is willing to do so, “snapping back” will require a drawn-out process here at home followed by a UN debate during which Russia, China, and maybe even Western European nations will block the reimposition of sanctions. Their eagerness to do business with Iran will trump all.

Iran Is Already Cheating

Supporters of the nuclear framework claim that Iran’s compliance with the interim deal signed with the West in November 2013 shows it can be trusted to keep its word. Such a claim is at best unsubstantiated and very likely untrue. Absent intrusive surprise inspections, the West really doesn’t know what the Iranians are doing at their facilities, including the ones they don’t currently acknowledge but that Western intelligence agencies are sure exist. Britain already told the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has continued illicit work on its program in spite of the restrictions imposed in the interim deal. Admitting the truth in this case would require the United States to rethink its assumptions about the prospects for compliance.

UN Report Indicts ‘Refugee’ Agency

In April, a long-awaited UN report on last summer’s fighting in Gaza was finally issued. The report contained predictable condemnations of incidents in which Israeli gunfire hit UN facilities where civilians were sheltering during the war with Hamas. But even this highly biased institution was compelled to acknowledge that Hamas had stored weapons in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is solely dedicated to funding Palestinian refugee programs. Given that Hamas personnel had infiltrated UNRWA in recent years, this is hardly a surprise. The UN noted that many of the incidents for which it blamed Israel began with terrorists firing on Israeli targets in the vicinity of the UN shelters. But the real war crime here is the way Hamas used neutral structures such as UNRWA schools and hospitals for military purposes. Hamas used the civilian population of the Strip as human shields during a war in which it fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. More to the point, in the week after the UN report was issued, the immediate past chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces noted the mortar shell that killed a four-year-old Jewish child during the war was fired from a UN compound. But the UN report made no mention of that death or of the way its buildings were used to shelter the child’s killers.

Targeting Jews on Campus

The movement seeking to isolate Israel via BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) efforts continues to gain support on American college campuses—and some recent incidents have proved the BDS movement is inherently anti-Semitic. At Stanford University, a Jewish student of Hispanic background was singled out and quizzed on her Judaism by a student group making endorsements for university office. As with a similar incident at University of California, Los Angeles, pro-BDS activists didn’t just want to criticize Israeli policy; they wanted to label Jews as unsavory. Such conduct must be named for what it is: Jew hatred.

Anti-Semitic Attacks in Europe Continue

As Israel continued to come under fire in international forums, European Jews found themselves facing ongoing anti-Semitic attacks. In London, a synagogue was attacked by a mob of anti-Semites, and a reporter was beaten in a British district declared an “Israel-free zone” by its unmitigatedly evil member of Parliament, George Galloway, after the reporter was called a “f—ng Jew.” In Hungary, Jewish targets were vandalized. And in France, Jews continued to refrain from wearing identifying clothing or jewelry lest thugs set upon them. That these incidents have continued to occur, even after the pledges of unity and tolerance in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo/kosher-market shootings, illustrates the rapidity with which Europe is descending into a moral pit.