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Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/04/11/israels-challenge-is-stopping-irans-recovery/
Israel's Challenge Is Stopping Iran's Recovery
(Israel Hayom) 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.