On Feb. 27, 2018, Iran inaugurated an “Hourglass Festival” celebrating the “immanent collapse” of Israel. According to the Times of Israel, the festival’s official website features calls for submissions on several topics including: Israel as a cancerous tumor, Israel as a racist, fake and colonialist regime, and Israel as a “Zionist, child-killing” country.

More ominously, the festival reasserted claims—first made in 2015 at the height of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program—that Tehran has a secret “plan” to destroy the Jewish state in 25 years. And the evidence is clear: The Islamic Republic believes that it is making progress on this objective.