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In-Depth Issues:
Trump Floats Hormuz Naval Blockade after U.S.-Iran Talks Fail - Shir Perets ( Jerusalem Post)
After both the U.S. and Iran reported a failure to reach a deal during the weekend's ceasefire talks in Islamabad, President Trump on Sunday shared an article suggesting he would "out-blockade Iran's hold over the Strait of Hormuz."
The article claimed that "it would be very easy for the U.S. Navy to exert complete control over what does and does not go up and down the Strait now."
The Victory of the Military Option in Iran - Amnon Lord ( Israel Hayom)
Not much is left of the Iranian state. According to an IDF source, the Israel Air Force and intelligence agencies eliminated dozens upon dozens of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and thousands of the organization's terrorists.
The mission for which we gathered was accomplished.
The criterion is very simple: does Iran still have the ability to move forward toward obtaining a nuclear weapon, and does it still have a missile-launching capability that creates deterrence?
Those basic capabilities were taken away from Iran. Its missile-production capabilities were destroyed. The Iranians agreed to a ceasefire because of Trump's threats.
Iran's missile wall has been greatly depleted, and Iran's entire nuclear production system has been neutralized.
Even without knowing what is happening with the 450 kg. of enriched uranium, at this stage Iran has no ability to produce a nuclear device.
Every production line, every part and component, and the entire manufacturing chain, from the factories and laboratories in which Iran advanced toward a bomb, was destroyed.
Strategic Lessons from the Iran War - Dr. Gad Yishayahu ( National Interest)
The war began with shock and awe: a sudden strike at the very top of Iran's power pyramid.
The elimination of senior leadership in the opening hours of a war between sovereign states constitutes a rare moment in modern conflict.
Dr. Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, argues in his book, Targeted Killings, Law and Counter-Terrorism Effectiveness: Does Fair Play Pay Off?, that the Iranian leaders were not only political figures, but operational architects of terror and violence against civilians, making their elimination seem less like political elimination and more like strategic prevention.
In this war, U.S.-Israel military cooperation moved beyond coordination toward operational integration.
One can see American officers operating within Israeli command centers without restriction, while Israeli counterparts are embedded within U.S. Central Command structures.
Such integration enhances effectiveness, strengthens deterrence, and demonstrates a broader American effort to build a stronger, cohesive regional architecture.
Across the Gulf, rivalries that formerly defined regional dynamics are being subordinated to immediate security demands.
Qatari policy has long been built on maintaining friendly relations with Iran while also hosting U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base. Yet Iranian drone strikes on the Ras Laffan LNG complex have reportedly reduced Qatari production capacity by 17%, with recovery expected to take 3-5 years.
The writer is a senior fellow and lead researcher at the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum.
The Iranian Regime Can Claim It Stood Up to America and Israel - Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh ( Wall Street Journal)
The Islamic Republic gains strength among those Iranian men who still believe in the revolution. These believers still seek a defining struggle of good vs. evil.
The hardened men who rule Iran see this war in existential terms. Its rulers truly believe that the country's vast internal dissent is in part fueled by foreign conspiracies.
Compromising on anything fundamental through diplomacy with Washington threatens the regime at home. Too much of the Islamic Republic's aura has already been compromised.
The regime can now claim, with some justification, that it stood up to America and Israel and beat the Great Satan in the Strait of Hormuz. The Persian Gulf has become Tehran's indispensable hostage.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The "Now or Never" Rationale for the Iran War - Jason Willick ( Washington Post)
Iran regards Israel and the U.S. as mortal enemies, and, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, its rapid accumulation of ballistic missiles and drones would have afforded it "immunity" from attack in "about a year or a year and a half."
The trend lines on ballistic missiles help explain why President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to strike now.
Iran would also have acquired a degree of immunity from attack if the U.S. elected a president more inclined to restrain Israel.
Virtually all Democratic contenders, and many Republican contenders, likely fit that bill.
The "now or never" rationale for this war, in other words, was probably political as well as military.
Trump and Netanyahu saw an opening to do something that might be foreclosed in the future both by Iran's missile development and the political trajectory in the U.S. They took it.
Israel's Iron Dome Logs 10,000 Combat Intercepts - Anna Ahronheim ( Jerusalem Post)
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system logged its first successful intercept of a rocket on April 7, 2011, after Hamas fired a Grad missile toward the city of Ashkelon.
Since then, the system has logged more than 10,000 combat intercepts and sustained success rates exceeding 90%.
"Over the past 15 years, the system has changed the face of the battlefield and shielded Israel's civilians from relentless threats coming from multiple adversaries," said Prof. Yuval Steinitz, Chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the primary contractor for the development of the Iron Dome.
"It is the most combat-proven system in the world, having logged more intercepts than most other defense systems combined."
Defending Israel in an Age of Madness - Amb. Michael Oren ( Los Angeles Jewish Journal)
For the past 50 years, in capacities both official and voluntary, I have spent most of my time defending the State of Israel.
Standing up for Israel became especially daunting after Oct. 7, 2023, when the victims of a verifiable genocide were baselessly accused of perpetrating one.
Conspiracy theories once considered fringe had become mainstream, and age-old antisemitic tropes had resurfaced in a presumption of Jewish wickedness.
America's national derangement is virtually insurmountable for the defenders of Israel.
Though readily disproven, Israel's guilt for annihilating an entire people is today accepted by more than half of the general public.
Many favor Palestinian anti-American terrorists over America's only dependable, democratic, military ally.
For many decades, advocates for Israel and Zionism wielded the weapon of truth. We produced volumes of "myths and facts" about the conflict. But how should we react when rampant unreason is infused with antisemitism?
In this new, twisted American universe, Oct. 7 was a false flag operation in which Israel massacred and kidnapped its own people as a pretext for occupying Gaza, and ZAKA volunteers staged the rape scenes at the Nova Festival.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the terrorist who drove his car into a Michigan synagogue, was portrayed by NPR as a gentle, otherwise law-abiding citizen with genuine grievances. The New York Times eulogized Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who butchered his own people.
Amid such bedlam, try to advance a logical argument about why Israelis, threatened by a regime sworn to annihilate us and industriously producing the means of doing so, might not want to sit passively until it strikes.
The classic antisemitic canard of the cunning Jew winding the unwitting gentile around his crooked finger has been embraced by most of the American press.
Yet we must continue to battle the madness - even if we can only dent it here and there.
We can reinforce those who remain moored in morality and believe in the need to defeat evil in the world.
The writer was Israel's ambassador to the U.S., 2009-13.
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After the Iran ceasefire, Daily Alert returns
to Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday publication
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- U.S. and Iran Fail to Reach Deal after Marathon Peace Talks - Tyler Pager
Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that 21 hours of peace talks in Pakistan between the U.S. and Iran had failed to produce an agreement to end the war. "They have chosen not to accept our terms," Vance said. "We leave here with a very simple proposal: a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We'll see if the Iranians accept it."
The negotiating session in Islamabad was the highest-level face-to-face encounter between U.S. and Iranian officials since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
(New York Times)
See also Israeli Assessment: Gaps in U.S.-Iran Talks "Are Very Large" - Lior Ben Ari
An Israeli official familiar with the talks in Pakistan said that despite the seriousness of the negotiations, the assessment in Jerusalem is that there is a strong likelihood they will collapse. "It will be very difficult for Iran to compromise, so the assessment is that in the end it will blow up."
"The negotiations are not a show - they are being conducted with full seriousness. No one is dragging their feet. But the gaps are very large, so the assessment is that in the end the talks will collapse."
At the same time, both Israel and the U.S. are preparing for a possible resumption of fighting even before the ceasefire expires. Israeli officials say that, if the war resumes, preparations are underway for a broad strike on infrastructure and energy targets. The airlift of munitions and aircraft from the U.S. to Israel is continuing. In Jerusalem, officials are confident that Washington shares their view on the required conditions for Iran - chiefly the removal of enriched uranium and the dismantling of Iran's nuclear program.
Iran had threatened to walk away from the talks if a full ceasefire in Lebanon was not achieved, but after President Trump asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to scale back strikes, Israel is, for now, refraining from strikes in Beirut. Tehran agreed to begin negotiations, citing a "ceasefire in Beirut." Meanwhile, the IDF is continuing operations in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah continued launching rocket barrages toward northern Israel. (Ynet News)
- Iran Unable to Find Mines It Planted in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says - Julian E. Barnes
Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials. Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month. (New York Times)
See also U.S. Forces Start Mine Clearance Mission in Strait of Hormuz
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces began setting conditions for clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday as two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers transited the strait and operated in the Arabian Gulf. They are part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The Strait of Hormuz is an international sea passage and an essential trade corridor that supports regional and global economic prosperity. Additional U.S. forces, including underwater drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days.
(CENTCOM)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Netanyahu: Israel, Lebanon to Begin Direct Talks on Hizbullah Disarmament and Peace - Maya Zanger-Nadis
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday, "Following repeated requests from the Lebanese government to open peace negotiations with us, last night I instructed the Cabinet to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon to achieve two goals: First, the disarming of Hizbullah. Second, a historic, sustainable peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon."
The negotiations, expected to begin on Tuesday in Washington, will be conducted between Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad. Israeli sources stated that there is currently no ceasefire and that Israeli forces will remain on the ground in Lebanon in the immediate future to act against any threat from Hizbullah.
NBC News reported on Thursday that President Trump asked Netanyahu to scale back Israel's strikes in Lebanon in a phone conversation on Wednesday in order to help ensure the success of U.S. negotiations with Iran.
(Jerusalem Post-Prime Minister's Office)
- Hizbullah Rocket Hits School in Northern Israel Arab Town
A Hizbullah rocket struck a school in the northern Arab town of Deir al-Asad on Friday afternoon. There were no reports of injuries. Throughout the day, Hizbullah fired rockets from Lebanon, striking communities along the border in the Upper Galilee and causing damage to homes, infrastructure and power lines.
(Ynet News)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran
- How Trump Is Rewriting the Rules of American Power - Sagiv Steinberg
America's Operation Epic Fury in Iran is not about nation-building. It is a limited, high-intensity campaign with a defined objective. "America First" does not mean strategic withdrawal and self-isolation. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in U.S. military-political doctrine toward small, focused, deeply integrated partnerships with allies willing to sacrifice, share intelligence at unprecedented levels, and jointly build operational capabilities aimed at striking the enemy at its points of maximum vulnerability.
Israel is the living example: deep intelligence and operational cooperation, joint planning, and the application of precise American power grounded in Israeli capabilities, all to achieve decisive strategic effect in minimum time and with minimum entanglement.
The doctrine rests on three pillars: narrowly defined military objectives; deep integration with allies that bring substantive capabilities, not merely political endorsement but action; and early action in secondary theaters to shape the conditions under which great-power competition unfolds.
The writer is CEO of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
(Jerusalem Report)
- Former CENTCOM Chief: U.S. and Israel Need to Monitor Iran's Missiles and Enriched Uranium - Yonah Jeremy Bob
Former U.S. CENTCOM Chief Gen. Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie Jr., who integrated Israel into CENTCOM following the Abraham Accords, said in an interview: "[Iran's] ballistic missiles are more dangerous than the nuclear issue. There must be some limiting governing mechanisms." No matter what is agreed to on paper, "how you enforce that with an overhead monitoring regime with a long-term commitment" is crucial. The bottom line was that the U.S. and Israel need to be ready to employ coercion. "If you build it, we will strike."
On the nuclear issue, McKenzie said that the most crucial question was not what Iran might promise, but having "an intrusive nuclear inspections regime. I cannot see a way forward which does not involve that."
Regarding Iran's 60%-enriched uranium buried under rubble in multiple bombed sites, he said the key was the regime knowing that any attempts they might make to retrieve the uranium would be struck by the U.S. and Israel.
"The Strait of Hormuz must be open - demonstrably open. There are lots of ways to do that."
If Iran stalls on the issue, McKenzie said the U.S. could "seize Kharg Island, which would shut down Iran's oil export capabilities....Maybe we don't need to put people on the shore....We can just make it impossible on those islands" for Iran to operate. The U.S. could "control those islands by fire - if the Iranians show up on the island, we kill them." (Jerusalem Post)
- How the Iran War Is Reordering the World - Second and Third-Order Effects - Chip Usher
Five weeks into the U.S-Israeli war against Iran, the more consequential story is playing out in the war's cascading second- and third-order effects: the economic shock reverberating through global energy and food systems, the hardening of the Iranian regime, the fracturing of alliance structures Washington has depended on for eight decades, the accelerating consolidation of a Russia-China axis, and the humanitarian emergencies now metastasizing far from any battlefield. These downstream consequences are rapidly outpacing the conflict itself in strategic significance, and they will shape the international order long after the last missile is fired.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has choked the global supply of sulfur (Gulf countries account for 45% of global output), helium, aluminum feedstocks, and - most critically - fertilizer. 1/3 of global seaborne fertilizer trade transits the Strait. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and several East African nations - which depend on Gulf fertilizer imports and have limited stockpiles - face the prospect of a food security crisis.
After the installation of Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's successor, the network his father built over 37 years ensures continuity of the system's core commitments. His value to the regime is totemic: a wounded son of a martyred leader, governing from the shadows while the security apparatus runs the country.
The foundational narrative of the Islamic Republic emphasizes survival against overwhelming odds.
What is emerging in Tehran is a garrison state. The IRGC and the wider security apparatus are now in effective control of governance, economic policy, and foreign affairs. Any future diplomatic engagement will confront an Iranian interlocutor that is more traumatized and more committed to the nuclear hedge.
The writer, who served 32 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, is Senior Director for Intelligence at the Special Competitive Studies Project. (Cipher Brief)
- Military Success Is Real but It Is Not Permanent - Yaakov Katz
Final and absolute victory is never how war works in the Middle East and certainly not against an enemy like Iran.
Military action can buy time and weaken, disrupt, and delay. But it does not, on its own, produce the victory.
That is why, when we look at this war and ask what exactly was achieved, there is not yet a clear answer.
In a historic joint military campaign, Israel and the U.S. inflicted serious damage on Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure. Missile stockpiles were hit. Production sites were struck. Launchers were destroyed. Naval assets were targeted. Air defenses were degraded. Scientists and commanders were eliminated.
But the real question is what comes next. Wars are not judged only by what is destroyed on the battlefield. They are judged by what is built, secured, or prevented afterward. They are judged by whether the diplomatic and strategic outcome locks in the military gains and prevents the enemy from simply rebuilding.
Before Oct. 7, Israel knew that Hamas and Hizbullah had amassed massive arsenals and built extensive military infrastructure. But Israel's containment strategy focused on intent. In trying to assess intentions, Israel ended up deterring itself. It allowed the enemy's capabilities to grow.
After the 12-Day War in June 2025, when it became clear that Iran had accelerated missile production and was nearing a nuclear threshold, Israel decided not to wait until Iran had fully restored its missile arsenal and accumulated enough military-grade uranium. It acted first to deny the capabilities themselves. It shows that after Oct. 7, Israel revamped its defense doctrine. It is no longer willing to tolerate threats on its borders simply because the enemy has not yet pulled the trigger.
As long as this regime remains in Tehran, it will rebuild. It will develop newer missiles. It will seek to reconstitute its nuclear program. Had Iran possessed a nuclear weapon, this war likely would never have happened.
Which means Israel's job will be to stop it again. Leaders need to explain that military success is real and important, but that it is not permanent.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at JPPI, and a former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. (Jerusalem Post)
- Israel's Challenge Is Stopping Iran's Recovery - Meir Ben Shabbat
Iran's representatives will sit at the negotiating table with a sense of confidence, encouraged by their success in withstanding the American-Israeli war and in turning the Strait of Hormuz and the vulnerability of the Gulf states into effective leverage. Yet, Tehran knows that none of this compensates for Iran's losses or conceals the weaknesses exposed during the war.
Iran suffered another severe surprise attack, this time while braced for war. It lost its supreme leader and a sizable portion of its political and security leadership. Its defense arrays and formidable intelligence services were exposed as porous in the face of American-Israeli capabilities.
It lost strategic, military, infrastructural, and economic assets; damaged its relations with regional states; remained in striking isolation without any external support; and struggled to mount a meaningful military response against American and Israeli forces, whether through its own capabilities or via proxy actors. The war deepened the economic pit in which it had already been mired. In many areas, Iranian systems were set back by years.
Iran is now trying to achieve conditions that will ensure the regime's survival and enable Iran's rehabilitation and rebuilding. Once the fire has ceased, the regime's leaders in Tehran view negotiations more as an opportunity to extract the resources and conditions necessary for recovery than as a source of pressure against them.
From Israel's perspective, its strategic position today is far better than it was on the eve of the war: Iran's strategic capabilities have suffered a severe though not irreversible blow; the regime's stability has been shaken, even if it remains standing; Israel has once again demonstrated its military strength to the region and the world; and it has positioned itself as a leading strategic partner of the U.S., not as a dependent.
The writer, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, served as Israel's National Security Council head during 2017-2021. (Israel Hayom)
- Israel Today Faces Far Fewer Threats than It Did Before - Herb Keinon
After the ceasefire in Iran, Israel today faces far fewer significant threats than it did before. Iran, in turn, is considerably weaker than it was. While not all of the war's aims were achieved, enough was accomplished to significantly improve Israel's strategic position and security. The inability to remove all the enriched uranium or bring a conclusive end to the rule of the clerical regime in Tehran does not mean that the war has not fundamentally changed the regional reality. It has.
The War of Independence did not end with all of Israel's aspirations fulfilled. Before the war, the Jews did not have a state; afterward, they did. Some 6,000 people - out of a Jewish population of roughly 600,000 - were killed. There was no peace, only armistice agreements. The economy was in shambles. Yet the fundamental reality had changed.
Before Oct. 7, Iran was steadily advancing toward nuclear capability, building ballistic missiles at a fast clip, actively preparing and prepping its proxies for Israel's destruction. Today, Hizbullah and Hamas - the tentacles of the Iranian octopus - have been cut back sharply and the head of the octopus is stunned and battered.
Is it a complete victory? No. But is it significant? Unquestionably.
Those arguing that nothing was achieved are, in effect, arguing that Iran will rebuild and rearm, resting on the flawed assumption that Israel will simply sit back and allow that to happen.
But Israel has changed. The key lesson of Oct. 7 is that it is no longer possible to assume that those who openly declare their intent to destroy you will ultimately be restrained by your power. They will not, because their calculus is often shaped by ideological, religious, even messianic factors that lie outside conventional logic.
As a result, Israel's doctrine has shifted to actively preventing the enemy from building capabilities.
Some argue that the war will only intensify Iran's drive for a nuclear program. That may be so. But Israel and the U.S. have a strong incentive to prevent Iran from doing so. Iran can rebuild its nuclear and military capacities only if they allow it. It is reasonable to assume that they will not.
Iran's claim of victory despite its tremendous losses is reminiscent of Egypt's victory claim after the 1973 Yom Kippur War - a war in which, by most objective military measures, Egypt lost.
(Jerusalem Post)
Iran at the UN
- Iran's Grim Joke at the UN - Catherine Perez-Shakdam
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been nominated to a UN committee that will help shape policy on women's rights, human rights, disarmament and terrorism prevention.
Iran is a country where a young woman, Mahsa Amini, can be beaten to death for the crime of insufficient hair concealment, where schoolgirls are poisoned for daring to remove headscarves, where the "morality police" patrol the streets as if they were animal control and half the population a species to be managed. This is the state now invited to contribute to the global conversation on gender equality. It is a bit like asking Jack the Ripper to sit on the board of a women's shelter.
On human rights: The Islamic Republic has turned the abuse of its citizens into a system of government. Torture is not an aberration but a technique. Trials are not hearings but theater. Journalists, lawyers, artists and students are jailed, flogged, disappeared. Minorities - Kurds, Baluchis, Baha'is, Jews - are treated as internal enemies.
On disarmament: Iran's record is one long love letter to the proliferation of things that go bang, shipping weapons through every smuggling lane from the Gulf to the Mediterranean.
On terrorism prevention: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has spent decades recruiting, training and funding militias whose sole raison d'etre is to terrorize. The regime's fingerprints are on bombings in Buenos Aires, plots in Europe, rockets on Riyadh, and drones on tankers.
Someone must begin the slow, necessary work of re-civilizing our institutions - of re-establishing the quaint idea that those who legislate on human rights should not be in the business of trampling them, that those who shape policy on women's rights should not be beating women unconscious in police vans, that those who sit on terrorism committees should not be up to their elbows in explosives and martyrdom videos. In the meantime, the least we can do is refuse to applaud.
The writer is an associate scholar at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (Times of Israel)
Palestinian Arabs
- The 2026 Palestinian Constitution Reveals the True Intentions of a Palestinian State - Amb. Alan Baker
The recently published Palestinian Constitution, adopted in February 2026, reveals the true nature and intentions of any putative Palestinian state. It precludes any negotiated peace solution and overlooks the Palestinian commitment in the internationally-acknowledged 1993-5 Oslo Accords with Israel to negotiate an agreement on the permanent status of the territories and to live in peace with Israel. By advocating this constitution, the Palestinians are violating and undermining one of the most fundamental provisions of the Oslo Accords.
The constitution refers in Article 3 to Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine and commits to protecting its Christian sanctities. However, it entirely ignores the significant and ancient Jewish history and presence in Jerusalem. This includes Jewish holy places that are the epicenter of Judaism, central to the Jewish religion, and rich in historic Jewish heritage.
Article 12's reference to a "right of return" for refugees - intended to demographically undermine Israel - is particularly objectionable, given that no such right exists in international law. This also blatantly ignores the Palestinian commitment in the Oslo Accords to negotiate with Israel over refugees.
The inherent dichotomy between this strange Palestinian constitution and the hopes of Western leaders, based on a healthy dose of wishful thinking, for peaceful coexistence with Israel is glaring.
The writer, former Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs who participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
- The Arab Case for Israel - Abigail Klein Leichman
Lebanese-Iraqi journalist and scholar Hussain Abdul-Hussain, currently a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has written The Arab Case for Israel, based on decades of firsthand experience in the Arab world. He makes two compelling overall observations: that the Jewish state is good for the Arabs; and that the Arabs have never articulated a cogent alternative, dwelling on an imagined past rather than an imagined future.
"Palestinians have always wanted to rewind the clock, but to what time, exactly?...The problem for Palestinians has been that no matter which period in history they chose, they would never find a time when the Arabs of Palestine were sovereign over the land," he writes. "Throughout history, the only locals to have ever been sovereign over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea were...the Jews."
"Palestinians have never admitted their inability to imagine a future modern Palestine, or their failure to build a single modern institution in their history, let alone to build and manage a functioning state that is not the kind of medieval Islamist emirate that Hamas constructed in Gaza after 2007."
Arabs should seek peace with Israel not "out of despair or fear, but out of a conviction that - as a friend and an ally - the State of Israel is much more valuable to the Arabs than ejecting it and constructing in its stead a Palestine that would, at best, be a mediocre state."
"In over two millennia, since the Arabic language first started taking shape, there was never an Arab or Muslim dynasty that considered Jerusalem to be its capital." If the Palestinians ever choose to "prioritize measurable higher living standards over unquantifiable, manufactured, and manipulative concepts of pride, dignity, and national sovereignty, they will realize that peace with Israel, rather than defeating it, is their actual victory. It is Palestinians that need to be liberated, not Palestine." (Jerusalem Post)
Observations:
Shas party chairman Aryeh Deri, after Prime Minister Netanyahu, is the most veteran player on the Israeli political field, with experience across cabinets and governments for 38 years. He sat in the Security Cabinet sessions related to the Iran war.
- Q: Did we win?
Deri: "Yes."
Q: A decisive victory?
Deri: "I don't understand the phrase 'decisive victory.' Did we go into this campaign facing a grave threat to the Jewish people, and thank God we pushed back that threat in a very significant way? Clearly yes."
- "What did we want to stop all these years? Just the nuclear weapons story. We never dreamed we could strike inside Iran. So we started with Operation Rising Lion [June 2025], when our planes flew through Iranian skies and caused enormous damage and halted the race to nuclear weapons. That's true - they didn't eliminate everything, because the nuclear material was deep underground. But we neutralized most of their scientists, struck heavily at the entire weapons industry, and pushed them back months or years."
- "They were already at a stage where they were starting to move their missile industry and their weapons industry underground, too. Within a few months, we would not have been able to do anything. Everyone talks about nuclear weapons, but the ballistic threat is no less dangerous - in some ways even greater - because you don't use nuclear weapons quickly, but ballistic missiles? Freely."
- "The IDF chief of staff and the Mossad director...asked...that the Americans give their consent and provide protection. Nobody dreamed the Americans would join the attack....I never dreamed the Americans would go with us for 38 days and drop close to 20,000 munitions there....I tell you again with full responsibility - Netanyahu did not say to Trump and to the American administration anything that, God forbid, we didn't believe to be true."
- "The goal was to create conditions for the regime's fall, and I think we created those conditions. That's actually why I think the ceasefire is a blessing - there's a greater chance the regime will fall from within. Iran begged for a ceasefire."
- Q: Aren't you worried about a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn't theirs?
Deri: "That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans - whatever administration - will understand that their real ally is us."
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