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In-Depth Issues:
Why Iran Is Far from Collapse - Dr. Raz Zimmt ( Ynet News)
It is difficult to form definitive assessments in the midst of war. What is clear at this stage is that there is no indication the Iranian regime is nearing a breaking point or is prepared to make any concessions.
On the contrary, it now seems to be seeking to exploit the war as a strategic opportunity to reshape the regional order. Iran aims to establish regional arrangements based on recognition of its status and its capacity for harm.
There is no evidence of a loss of control by the security forces. Arrests and executions of civilians accused of espionage or collaboration with the regime's enemies have continued and even intensified.
The recent increase in launches from Iran indicates it is capable of continuing missile fire - at least at the current scale - for several more weeks.
Iran has identified the potential of the energy issue through its control of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on regional energy infrastructure. From Tehran's perspective, this is a strategic card that allows it to prolong the war until it secures guarantees that serve its interests.
The writer is director of the Iran and the Shiite Axis Program at the Institute for National Security Studies.
Iran's Top Officials Underestimated Mossad's Reach - and Paid the Price - Akhtar Makoii ( Telegraph-UK)
Iran's security chief Ali Larijani believed he would be safe at his daughter's house, 12 miles outside Tehran. And then 20 one-ton bombs were dropped on him.
Hours later, Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij paramilitary force, was tracked down to a combat tent in a wooded area on the outskirts of the capital with other Basij commanders.
Ali Younesi, Iran's intelligence minister from 2000-2005, said competing intelligence agencies focused on the surveillance of domestic critics and fighting each other for bureaucratic advantage, instead of working together against foreign agents.
The pattern of Israeli intelligence operations showed systematic infiltration that should have triggered comprehensive security reforms. But it did not.
During this war, it has been discovered that Israeli intelligence has accessed Tehran's traffic camera network, using the surveillance system meant to protect the capital to track the movements of targets through the city.
Iran has arrested hundreds on espionage charges and executed several, but officials acknowledge these actions are meant to "show that the system is still functioning" rather than addressing systematic infiltration.
Every additional day of war gives Israeli intelligence more time to target surviving officials, recruit additional sources, and establish the infrastructure for post-war operations.
Missile Interceptions and Falling Debris Are Striking Cities across Jordan - Waseem Abu Mahadi ( Media Line-Jerusalem Post)
Iran fired 240 missiles and drones at Jordan in three weeks of war, the Jordanian military said Saturday.
The Royal Jordanian Air Force shot down 222. Eighteen got through. On the ground, civil defense teams logged 414 debris incidents across the kingdom.
Jordan's armed forces spokesman, Brig.-Gen. Mustafa al-Hayyari, rejected suggestions that Iranian projectiles were merely transiting Jordanian airspace on their way to Israel.
The missiles and drones targeted Jordanian sites, he said, "vital installations inside Jordanian territory."
Iran Is at the Center of Regional Instability, Not the Palestinians - Gary Cohen ( Jewish Chronicle-UK)
In the Guardian last week, Nesrine Malik argued that everything now convulsing the Middle East flows from a single "original sin" - Israel and the plight of the Palestinians.
But this argument does not withstand even the most basic scrutiny. The organizing force at the center of regional instability is not the Palestinians. It never has been.
The inconvenient truth, for those who advance this view, is that the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the IRGC, are driving instability in the region and further afield.
It is their extremist revolutionary ideology, regional ambitions, and decades-long investment in building, funding and directing a network of proxies to project Iranian power, encircle, threaten and ultimately destroy the state of Israel, intimidate its neighbors, and challenge the West.
The Iranian regime has been engaged in the systematic repression and slaughter of its own people.
Tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed in brutal crackdowns, shot in the streets, arrested, tortured, mutilated, disappeared or executed. Victims' families are intimidated into silence.
These atrocities have nothing whatsoever to do with Gaza or the West Bank.
The same regime slaughtering its own people and denying them the most basic freedoms, pours vast resources into Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, and every other proxy willing to take up arms against Israel.
When Iranians chant "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran," they are rejecting the obsession with the annihilation of Israel, and the cynical diversion of their country's wealth and future into wars that serve no one but the regime.
For Regime Supporters, the Biggest Barrier to the Return of the Messianic Hidden Imam Is the Existence of the State of Israel - Kasra Aarabi ( Telegraph-UK)
Images and video footage of large crowds holding Islamic Republic flags, Hizbullah banners and images of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, are being continuously aired on Iranian state TV.
The people we are seeing are certainly real, but they represent a very narrow and extreme segment of Iranian society, the hard base of the regime.
The Islamic Republic has gradually lost the support of almost all social constituencies in Iran except for the hard base, which views the existence of the Islamic Republic and the pursuit of its ideological policies as a necessary means to facilitate the return of the messianic Hidden Shia Imam, Mahdi.
The doctrine claims that the Hidden Imam will one day return to restore justice to the world and, in doing so, will wage an apocalyptic war that will end the lives of infidels and Jews everywhere.
Historic Shia narrations, on which this doctrine is based, claim that there will be rivers of Jewish blood. According to this doctrine, the biggest barrier to the return of the Hidden Imam is the existence of the State of Israel.
The writer is director of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Trump Postpones Iran Strikes, Oil Prices Fall - Ed Ballard
President Trump said Monday he was postponing strikes on Iranian power plants for five days after what he described as productive talks with Iran. "I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period," Trump said in a social-media post.
Trump had said Saturday that the U.S. would strike Iranian infrastructure within 48 hours unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz. Oil futures fell below $100 a barrel after Trump said he was postponing the strikes. (Wall Street Journal)
- As Iran War Enters Fourth Week, Tehran Is Escalating Attacks - Susannah George
As the war in Iran enters its fourth week, Tehran is escalating attacks on its neighbors, betting it can ratchet up global economic pain faster than the Trump administration can relieve it with military force. Iran's unwillingness to capitulate is wrapped up in the power it exerts over the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's fuel shipments transit, that Tehran has largely closed.
Iran's leaders see their ability to control the strait and withstand the U.S. and Israeli onslaught as a short-term victory, an Arab official and European diplomats said. "They don't feel any pressure to negotiate," said a European diplomat based in the Persian Gulf. An Iranian diplomat said Iran would not be willing to stop attacks against U.S. interests unless Washington could agree to a number of "nonaggression" guarantees, including monetary compensation for war-related damage.
The U.S. and Israel have hit more than 15,000 targets across Iran, according to the Pentagon.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former U.S. intelligence officer focused on Iran, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that beneath its public bravado, the immense damage caused by thousands of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes would leave Iran's government less capable of addressing existing grievances and could spark new waves of popular unrest.
"The most critical moments for them is not during the battle when they hold out against the pummeling, it's when the pummeling stops." (Washington Post)
- U.S. Troop Build-up Raises Specter of Battle for Hormuz - Greg Miller
A surge of additional U.S. forces to the Middle East and President Trump's threat to "obliterate" Iran's energy infrastructure have set the stage for a battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz and key energy installations.
Contingents of U.S. sailors and Marines are heading to the Middle East.
"Those Marines aren't coming for decoration," said an Israeli official. The new U.S. deployment signals a plan "to take the island and the strait," referring to Kharg Island, Iran's main hub for exporting petroleum. Doing so could enable the U.S. and Israel to starve Tehran of oil revenue. (Washington Post)
- Four Ambulances Burned in Attack on London Jewish Ambulance Service
British police are investigating an arson attack on four vehicles belonging to the Hatzola Northwest Jewish ambulance service in Golders Green, London early Monday. The police said the incident is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime. (AP-Washington Post)
Surveillance footage shared on social media show several hooded or masked men pouring gasoline on the vehicles before fleeing the scene. (Jerusalem Post)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Israel's U.S. Ambassador: Cracks in Tehran's Regime Widen - Sam Halpern
Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told Bloomberg on Sunday, "We have small units within the system of the IRGC and the Basij, which are not turning their weapons yet on their superiors, but they're not showing up for work. And that's a first. It's developing, and it's a process."
"The edifice of this tyrannical regime is cracking. It has not opened up to wide chasms yet, but that's the direction it's going." Leiter added that it wasn't just Iran's military capabilities that were being degraded, but also the morale of its armed forces.
"Look at the ICBM that was fired yesterday [at the Diego Garcia military base]. They claimed for years and years, 'we don't have an ICBM.' Well, they did. And the ICBM that can be fired at 4,000 km., you know, give them a little bit more time, and they're going to have an ICBM that's going to hit Chicago." (Jerusalem Post)
- IDF Says Hizbullah Invasion Threat to Northern Communities Has Been Removed - Yair Kraus
Fire from Lebanon continued Monday as the IDF said it was deepening its ground operation in southern Lebanon, with commanders saying the move has successfully removed the threat of an incursion into northern Israel.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir approved plans Saturday to expand the maneuver. Zamir said, "The campaign against Hizbullah has only just begun. At the end of the campaign in Iran, Hizbullah will remain alone and isolated. This is a prolonged campaign, and we are prepared for it."
A senior Northern Command officer said the doubling of forward defensive posts inside Lebanese territory since Hizbullah joined the fighting had created a barrier preventing a large-scale raid. IDF troops are now deployed forward of the northern communities and would be the first to confront anyone attempting to attack civilians. The army plans to expand the destruction of Hizbullah infrastructure in border villages that was not completed during earlier operations.
The officer said that 70-80% of residents of Shiite villages south of the Litani River had so far evacuated, and that the figure is expected to reach 90% within a week. Meanwhile, rocket fire from Lebanon has continued throughout, with four people wounded Thursday in a direct hit on a building in the northern city of Kiryat Shmona. On Wednesday, a barrage of 300 projectiles was fired toward northern communities. The IDF said it was making a concentrated effort to reduce the fire.
(Ynet News)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran
- The Energy Panic Is Overblown for Now - Ilan Berman
Iran's clerical regime is now attempting to manipulate the regional energy picture to its advantage by threatening to shut down tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. News channels and social media platforms are now awash with commentary about the catastrophic effects that such disruptions might have on the world energy market.
But the actual picture is significantly less dire. In a recent analysis, Ariel Cohen of the Atlantic Council details that the high-water mark for oil prices in the past quarter-century came in 2008, when oil hit $147 per barrel - equivalent to roughly $223 per barrel in today's dollars. Current prices are nowhere near those levels.
Moreover, recent decades have seen regional producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE erect workarounds to keep regional oil flowing in the event of a disruption of traffic through the Hormuz. In addition, other potent oil producers (like Nigeria and Azerbaijan) have the ability to surge capacity to the market, thereby helping offset losses from the Strait.
The writer is Senior Vice President at the American Foreign Policy Council.
(Newsweek)
- Targeting Senior Officials in Iran Makes It Harder for the Regime to Function - Dr. Meir Javedanfar
Targeting senior Iranian officials can be strategically beneficial, as competent commanders or politicians may be replaced by less capable successors. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's successor, his son, Mojtaba, never held any official position or ministry. He had always worked behind the scenes, exploiting his father's status to get what he wanted - not through his own skills or connections. Therefore, Mojtaba Khamenei's rule as Supreme Leader is expected to significantly harm the functioning of the Iranian regime.
The positions held by slain senior officials are usually filled by individuals who are more hardline than their predecessors. This serves Israeli interests, as public animosity towards the regime increases the more extremist its figures are.
Senior officials in Iran are convinced that the Mossad is watching their every move. Consequently, they become increasingly suspicious and paranoid. This will have a significant impact on their performance. While the regime cannot be toppled through targeted killings, this strategy may still severely impair the regime's operational capabilities.
The writer is an Iran scholar at Reichman University. (Ha'aretz)
- Are We Seeing Signs of Iranian Regime Resilience or Breakdown? - Mehdi Parpanchi
18 days after the U.S. and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran, the Islamic Republic is still firing missiles and drones at Israel and other targets across the region. State television is still broadcasting. Basij and IRGC units are still present on the streets. These indicators are taken as evidence that the system has absorbed the shock and remains solid.
In reality, they indicate the opposite. The Islamic Republic prepared for the moment when its center would be hit. In that scenario, regional units keep firing, security forces keep repressing, and the state projects fragments of normality. What we are seeing is not resilience, but a regime preserving violence and surface function long enough to outlast the political patience of its adversaries. Tehran believes Washington will not fight a war for long. Its strategy, then, is endurance: keep shooting until the Americans decide the game is no longer worth the price.
Iranian planners built a structure meant to survive decapitation, fragmentation, and prolonged disruption. The missiles are still flying because the system was built to keep firing after the center's grip had already started to fray. What looks like resilience is in fact the functioning legacy of a doomsday design.
The absence of visible defections does not necessarily mean loyalty. If influential figures inside the system are unsure whether the U.S. intends to sustain pressure or whether it will eventually accept an off-ramp, they have every reason to hesitate. No one wants to gamble everything on a final move if they suspect American pressure may soon ease.
The writer is executive editor at Iran International TV. (Substack)
- Iran Has the Rhetoric of a Victor but the Position of a Loser - R.N. Prasher
So far, Iran has shown no interest in a ceasefire while doing everything in its diminished power to expand the war - in the process torpedoing the global economy. Yet, neither Israel nor the U.S. nor other countries in the region have suffered casualties and damage anywhere near that suffered by Iran and, unlike Iran, their leadership remains intact.
Their air defenses are still working while Iran's have been decimated. The U.S. and Israel operate freely in Iranian airspace, striking at will.
Iran's missile stockpile will not last indefinitely. A war of attrition cannot be a rational goal for Iran.
Iran's main allies are Russia and China, neither of which has offered substantial material help to Tehran's war effort.
(Asia Times-Hong Kong)
U.S.-Israel Relations
- Criticizing Israel in Wartime - Prof. Chuck Freilich
According to a survey by the Institute for National Security Studies, 91% of Israeli Jews support the war against Iran, which most view as a battle for Israel's very right to exist. Israel's American critics say Iran does not present an imminent threat.
In practice, Iran's ballistic missile program was growing at a rapid rate and becoming an extreme threat to Israel, of which we are now getting an initial "taste." Iran was also building new nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan and would eventually have unearthed the 400 kg. of highly enriched uranium, sufficient for the first 10 bombs.
Part of adulthood is the ability to put one's overall political preferences aside and assess specific issues on their merits. Trump and Netanyahu are doing an effective job of severely degrading a major threat to American security and an existential one to Israel's. On this they deserve our support and appreciation.
The critics have never had to cower in their shelters and safe rooms, grab their kids off the swings in a playground during an alert, or jump into a ditch on the highway. They rarely served in the IDF or sent their children to serve. They have never spent three or more years of sleepless nights, worrying whether their sons - and increasingly daughters - who serve in combat units are all right. Most American Jews have never lived in a country in which one is rarely out of sight of the nearest hostile border.
They have never had to live for decades in the face of existential threats and the knowledge that Israel's enemies would annihilate its civilian population if ever given the opportunity, as proven so tragically on Oct. 7. They have never had to live with continuous terrorism and repeatedly had to call the cell phones of loved ones to make sure they were okay after another barbarous attack.
If you care deeply about Israel and want to have a positive impact, support AIPAC. It may not be perfect, but it is the only pro-Israel lobby.
The writer is a former Israeli deputy national security advisor.
(Ha'aretz)
- Israel Is America's Best Ally - We Must Reject the Evil of Antisemitism - Hugh Hewitt
The stunning and ominous rise in antisemitism in the U.S. cannot be disputed, but can be resisted. It is particularly the obligation of genuine Christians to participate in the repression through education of the ancient evil. It is the particular obligation of Christian institutions to do their part in making this sin once again an obvious source of shame and to help cure those who suffer from it and, where it cannot be cured, to force it back by shaming and shunning into the deepest shadows where it belongs.
In a dangerous world, even the dominant superpower - the U.S. - needs allies. Israel is, objectively, the most important ally of the U.S. It is the equal of any military on the globe in its ability to strike far and hard and to dominate its region. It's an intelligence superpower and an engine of technological excellence and ever-increasing breakthroughs. If any country had to pick one strong ally not named the U.S., it would pick Israel.
Israel is also a reliable and fully-integrated-into-our-military ally. Israel takes what the U.S. makes and improves on it, as had been the case with the F-35 fighter. It sometimes takes the rudiments of a technology and develops them to scale and deploys them, as with Iron Dome and soon Iron Beam. Those advancements will return to America as the Golden Dome and the Golden Beam.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Israel shares America's founding values of individual liberty and democratic governance. Freedom of speech is as robust there as it is here. Human rights are respected there as they are here. It is a "Western nation" in every respect. (Fox News)
Palestinian Arabs
- Begging Hamas to Disarm - The Misguided Approach of Trump's "Board of Peace" - Khaled Abu Toameh
President Trump's "Board of Peace" reportedly presented Hamas with a written proposal on how it could lay down its weapons, at meetings in Cairo over the past week attended by Nikolay Mladenov, the "Board of Peace" envoy to Gaza, and Aryeh Lightstone, a U.S. aide to special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Someone needs to inform Mladenov that Hamas has already made a decision to reject disarmament.
Over the past few months, Hamas leaders have consistently characterized disarmament as a "red line." There is something deeply misguided - if not outright dangerous - about the idea that the U.S. should beg Hamas to lay down its weapons. To ask Hamas politely to disarm is fantasyland.
Hamas is a terrorist group whose foundational principles and actions are centered on the use of violent jihad (holy war) and the destruction of Israel. It cannot achieve its goal without holding onto its weapons. Hamas's 1988 Charter rejects any negotiated peace settlement, and emphasizes that jihad is the "only solution."
On the occasion of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades released a video pledging to continue the fight "until the complete liberation of Palestine" - the elimination of Israel. "Every sacrifice brings Palestinians one step closer to their goal of complete liberation."
Hamas will disarm only when it realizes that the cost of holding onto weapons exceeds the benefits.
Treating disarmament as a voluntary goodwill gesture rather than a non-negotiable prerequisite is unfortunately a non-starter. Disarmament is a condition that must be enforced to prevent countless more Oct. 7-style massacres against Jews. (Gatestone Institute)
Observations:
- Every state depends on a leadership layer that holds institutional knowledge, experience, and decision-making authority. In the opening strikes of Israel's Iran operation, Iran's entire senior command layer was eliminated. When that entire layer is removed at once, the system goes into shock.
- Systems adapt. They promote replacements, reorganize, and continue functioning, often less effectively, but functioning nonetheless. Then their replacements are targeted too. The goal is not just the man, but the office. A new leadership that inherits intact capabilities can still fight. So, alongside the targeted killings, missile systems are destroyed, air defenses dismantled, and infrastructure struck. Any replacement leadership that emerges does so with fewer tools and diminished reach.
- All this does not topple a regime. They generate pressure, fear, and attrition. But they do not produce collapse. Regimes do not fall because of external pressure alone. They fall when their internal mechanisms of coercion stop working for them. Domestic protests, however large, cannot bring down a regime that is willing to massacre its own people.
- The only path to regime collapse runs through defection, and the most consequential defection would come from Iran's conventional military - the Artesh - which is a separate body from the ideological Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij. For the Artesh to move, it first needs to see the IRGC fracture.
- A conventional military watching a unified, dominant Revolutionary Guard will not move. But a conventional military watching an organization that appears fractured, internally suspicious, and visibly weakened begins to calculate differently. An officer does not abandon a system simply because he is afraid. He abandons it when he believes there is a future on the other side. That means guaranteed immunity, protection for his family, and preservation of his interests.
- In Romania in 1989, Ceausescu's regime did not fall because of street protests alone. It fell the moment the army stopped obeying and crossed to the side of the protesters. The decisive moment will come only if an armed force, above all the Artesh, concludes that it has a real alternative and that choosing it is worth the risk.
The writer, vice president of the Jerusalem Center, served in senior government positions for 27 years.
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