My brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger.1

A Ritual: False or True?

The ritual beckoned. It was, in many respects, a traditional ceremony. Proud smiles. A myriad of handshakes. The dawn of a historic day, with vows of friendship eternal. An agreement signed in Mecca, that most historic and sacred of Islamic sites, on Friday between the Saudis, Turks, and Pakistanis was heralded as a defensive pact.2 In another age this ritual would not be complete without the shedding of blood.

Yet it was not long ago that the Turks and Saudis were, if not foes, then distrustful rival centers of power in the Middle East. When the Saudis commenced their blockade of Qatar over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist ideology, it was the Turks who expanded their presence in Qatar and sent a further contingent of troops to the small emirate.3 The Saudis and their allies demanded that the Turks leave.4 The demand went nowhere. Turkish ambitions for a neo-Ottoman vision of the Middle East, Qatar’s support for Turkey in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup attempt, and their shared Islamist affinities proved too strong a pull to be overcome by the ire of the Saudis and their allies.5

The Middle East is a region riven by rivalrous powers, each vying for advantage over the other. Much blood has been shed over this feature of power politics. While the Saudis have long been close to the Pakistanis and even signed a formal defense agreement with that Islamic republic in 2025,6 the agreement with Turkey represents a historic expansion of what had previously been a privileged relationship. The signing of the pact comes amid the ongoing wreckage of the war against Iran. During the war, the Iranians—and now their proxies—have sent volley after volley of missiles against the Saudis, mainly claiming to target American military installations in the kingdom.7 The prolonged insecurity unleashed by the chaos of the war has raised questions about the value of American military assets in the Gulf. This, in turn, has encouraged these states to begin rebalancing their security arrangements in order to ensure their own survival.8

A New Protector?

The Saudis, then, are searching for a new arrangement. Perhaps, too, a new protector. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan took pains to point out that the agreement included a clause equivalent to NATO’s Article 5, pledging the nations to collective security. In Fidan’s view, it represented the first stabilizing act in the region since the end of Ottoman rule. He also hinted that the pact was open to other powers joining it. “I have been discussing these issues continuously for exactly two years and eight months with our partners, with the partners with whom we signed the agreement, and with other countries in the region,” Fidan said. He disavowed the notion that the pact was directed against any one country.9

The Pakistanis were less diplomatic. Only a day had passed after the inking of the deal when the Pakistani defense minister denounced Israel as a threat to “the entire Muslim world” and declared the Jewish state’s creation in 1948, following the 1917 Balfour Declaration, illegitimate. The minister added that there ought to be “a united military front” against the vaunted Zionist foe.10

There is an irony in a Pakistani minister denouncing Israel’s origins as an illegitimate product of British imperialism while speaking on behalf of a state whose own creation was deeply entangled with the British partition of India. Indeed, the partition of India and creation of Pakistan led toward a much more violent process than the one surrounding Israel’s birth. Such ironies and hypocrisies abound in the Middle East, where the legitimacy of one state’s origins is often judged according to standards that are conveniently withheld from another.

More importantly, Pakistan’s rhetoric sits somewhat awkwardly alongside the strategic circumstances in which this pact was born. Pakistan maintains close relations with Iran even as Iranian forces and their proxies have been attacking one of the pact’s signatories, Saudi Arabia. The new alliance contains within it not only a commonality of interests but competing ones.

Hedging Against Uncertainty

The defensive pact has nevertheless garnered considerable attention in Israel. Dr. Yoel Guzansky, head of the Gulf Research Field at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), expressed concern that the alliance was a sign of waning American regional influence and an example of hedging behavior. Israeli conduct that contributed to the perception that Israel was seeking to become a “hegemon” and was embroiling itself and the region in “endless wars,” Guzansky argued, did not serve Saudi interests. Nor did the fact that the pact involved two countries with deeply rooted anti-Israeli attitudes escape him; the agreement, he noted, further complicated efforts at normalization between Israel and its neighbors. Guzansky likewise doubted that the pact itself would accomplish much beyond serving as a diplomatic statement, given that neither the Pakistanis nor the Turks desired to join the war against Iran.11

The Ghosts of Earlier Pacts

Grand ideological projects tend not to last long in the Middle East. They are often swallowed up by the arid desert, their thirst for permanence left unquenched. The political union between Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic, formed in 1958, collapsed in 1971. Other attempts, such as the United Arab States, the Federation of Arab Republics, and the Arab Islamic Republic, either failed to get off the ground or proved similarly short-lived. The Middle East Treaty Organization—better known as the Baghdad Pact and later CENTO—which brought together Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s, was dysfunctional almost from the start12 and was later described as “the least successful of the Cold War schemes engendered by the Anglo-American alliance.”13

The lesson of these earlier experiments is not necessarily that alliances in the Middle East are doomed. States have genuine and enduring security interests, and those interests can produce remarkably durable partnerships. The lesson is rather that the rhetoric surrounding such arrangements should not be confused with the interests that sustain them.

The Desert Remains

The Mecca pact therefore deserves neither immediate celebration nor immediate dismissal. It should instead be understood as what it most clearly is: a sign of strategic uncertainty. Saudi Arabia is looking for greater freedom of maneuver. Turkey sees an opportunity to enlarge its regional role. Pakistan seeks to preserve its ties with Riyadh while projecting its own conception of Muslim solidarity. And all three are operating in a Middle East whose previous assumptions about American protection, Iranian power, and regional order have been shaken by war.

The pact may endure. It may expand. It may eventually become the nucleus of something more substantial. But the history of the region counsels caution. Alliances born amid uncertainty are often strongest when the threat is immediate and weakest when the threat recedes.

And somewhere beyond the ceremony, beyond the speeches and the flags and the signatures, the desert will remain. The desert remembers none of them. It has seen brothers turn against brothers, cousins against cousins, and strangers become brothers for a season. Then the wind comes. And the lines are erased. And the game begins again. Such are the affairs of men and nations.

8

Hulkower, I. (2026, June 21). Judgement Day: An Assessment of the Hormuz Crisis. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Judgment Day

They symbolized You in many varied visions…

Read more

2 months ago · 3 likes · Ilan Hulkower

; Alexander, K. (2026, June 1). U.S. Bases in the GCC: A Security Model Under Attack. Middle East Council on Global Affairs. https://mecouncil.org/blog_posts/u-s-bases-in-the-gcc-a-security-model-under-attack/

Day of Wrath

Thus did the prophet mourn all that had been lost in the doomsday that might yet have been averted. Immense suffering had been unleashed upon the nation, led astray by the wayward and the irresolute, before the mighty Babylonian horde. The Temple—dreamed of by King David, built by King Solomon, and the supreme symbol of Judah’s sacred sovereignty—was plundered and destroyed by this foreign host. With its destruction, the sovereignty of Judah likewise came to an end. Its princes and its people were driven into forced exile, a sentence that had proved fatal for many other conquered nations.

Jeremiah, the embittered prophet, had long warned that this terrible day was coming. Now he witnessed his warnings fulfilled in blood and ashes. He too would ultimately be driven into exile in Egypt.

Jewish history has been marked not only by the memory of this singular catastrophe but by its recurrence. The Second Temple was likewise destroyed on Tisha b’Av2—the very date commemorating the destruction of the First—again at the hands of a foreign empire after a failed bid for Jewish independence. Yet whereas the Babylonian exile endured only seventy years, the Roman Exile would last for nearly two millennia. Other calamities in Jewish history have likewise fallen upon this mournful date.3 Consequently, Tisha b’Av is observed with profound solemnity: a day of fasting, mourning, reflection upon the fragility of earthly things, and repentance for the sins that tradition holds contributed to these national disasters.

Another Dark Day Remembered

Closer to our own time, the events of another dark day—October 7, 2023—inevitably come to mind. That date did not fall on Tisha b’Av. Rather, it coincided with the Jewish Sabbath and with the joyous festival of Simchat Torah, which celebrates the completion of one annual cycle of public Torah readings and the beginning of another. During this festival, public displays of mourning are prohibited, and celebration itself forms part of the religious obligation.4

I vividly remember that morning all too well. I first heard the dreadful reports while attending synagogue services. At first came word of an unprecedented barrage of rockets fired from Gaza and of Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israeli territory. Soon afterward came reports of massacres, followed by news of hundreds taken captive. As the reports multiplied, my thoughts turned immediately to those who had first learned of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 while gathered in prayer. They too had watched the sanctity of a holy day shattered by the sudden realization that war had come.

There is a striking passage from Lamentations that captures the mood that descended upon my own community—and, no doubt, countless others—that day:

You summoned, as on a festival,
My neighbors from round about.
On the day of G-d’s wrath,
None survived or escaped;
Those whom I bore and reared
My foe has consumed.5

Jeremiah’s words seemed almost to describe the day itself. Once again, enemies had gathered “as on a festival,” turning a sacred day of rejoicing into one of slaughter.6 None could escape the dreadful significance of the timing. Returning to October 7, it became, to put the matter mildly, extraordinarily difficult to absorb the unfolding horror while simultaneously participating in the joyous rituals of Simchat Torah. The dissonance between thought and action was overwhelming.

Although October 7 does not fall on Tisha b’Av7, Tisha b’Av has long since become more than a commemoration of tragedies that occurred on a single calendar date. It has become the day on which Jews mourn the total accumulated catastrophes of their history. We possess no prophets in our own age. Indeed, the age of prophecy has long since passed.

Life After Catastrophe

Yet Jewish history refuses to dwell forever in tragedy. Jeremiah, embittered and broken though he was, instructed the exiles in distant Babylon to build houses, plant gardens, marry, raise families, and seek the welfare of the cities in which they dwelt. He commanded them to pray for the peace of their new and alien habitation. Above all, he warned them not to be led astray by false prophets who promised an immediate and illusory redemption.8

Reflecting upon this warning, the scholar Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and Rabbi Shnayor Burton observe:

Mansour and Burton connect this warning to Jeremiah’s command that the exiles should build, labor, and pray for the peace of the cities in which they now found themselves. To continue living ordinary lives was neither a concession to exile nor an abandonment of what had been lost. Rather, it constituted an act of faith.

For even Jeremiah did not believe that what had been lost would remain lost forever. Hope was never extinguished, nor was reconciliation placed beyond possibility. In his letter to the exiles, he wrote:

For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word10 to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think11 toward you, declares the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.12

Here lies not only the promise of Israel’s restoration to its land, but the reassurance that the hidden thoughts of the Almighty remain directed toward peace, hope, and futurity. Even amid darkness, there remains light at the end of the tunnel.

Although Jeremiah was not the last of Israel’s prophets, this letter nevertheless occupies a singular place in the biblical narrative. As Mansour and Burton observe:

They further argue that Jeremiah’s injunction to pray for the welfare of the kingdom follows naturally from this transition. Though prophecy has ceased, prayer has not.

As they write:

The man who saw the affliction also foresaw the path toward restoration. Though the prophetic voice would one day fall silent, the covenant between God and His people would endure. The age of davar had yielded to machshavah. Lament had yielded to perseverance, and prophecy to prayer.

3

On this point, see Hulkower, I. (2025, August 3). Doomsday Past: Tisha B’Av and the Echoes of Jewish Catastrophe. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Doomsdays Past

Alas! Lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among nations…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

9

Mansour, H.A. & Burton, S. (July 21, 2026). After Prophecy: Preserving Value and Order Under Divine Concealment, a Religious Phenomenology of Modern Life and Politics. The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

After Prophecy

All that is solid melts into air. The line has been quoted so often that it has itself melted, dissolved into the very atmosphere it was meant to describe. Dissolution and liquefaction are perhaps the two most common sociological terms used today. Marriages dissolve at the fir…

Read more

a month ago · 38 likes · 5 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and Rabbi Shnayor Burton

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.1

The American Cause: National Or Universal?

The American cause has, from its birth, been associated with the watchword of liberty. This is not to say that liberty in America has always been applied consistently or without hypocrisy. Nor has the United States exported its own liberal conception of itself abroad without controversy, rancor, or moments of triumphalist folly. Yet it remains a nation of remarkable stature, animated by ideals that have shaped both its character and its aspirations.

Born in an age dominated by monarchies and aristocracies, the United States alone proclaimed that ordinary citizens ought to govern themselves. Its Founders drew upon the political traditions of many earlier societies while crafting a distinctly American constitutional order. The Constitution emerged not from the triumph of one faction imposing its will upon the rest, but from compromise, bargaining, and negotiation among competing interests. Despite their differences, the delegates shared a common objective: to establish a government capable of preserving the liberty of a free people while providing the stability necessary for republican government to endure.

From the earliest days of the Revolution, many argued that the American struggle concerned more than the liberties of the colonies alone. It represented a turning point in the history of mankind itself. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” Thomas Paine proclaimed in Common Sense.2 Yet the English-born Paine did more than celebrate the historic significance of the Revolution. He elevated it into a universal cause:

Paine’s insistence that the American cause was “the cause of all mankind” reflected a conviction that liberty transcended national boundaries. The interests of “all lovers of mankind” were, in his view, bound together regardless of whether they resided in America, Britain, or elsewhere. From the beginning, therefore, many understood the American experiment not merely as a national undertaking but as an event with profound consequences for humanity as a whole.

The colonies, however, did not achieve independence alone. They secured crucial assistance from foreign powers, most notably France, Britain’s longstanding rival. The resulting alliance pledged mutual defense without any specified expiration.4 When Revolutionary France later entered into war with Great Britain, Americans became deeply divided over whether the United States should honor that relationship. Even before the outbreak of the wider conflict, Paine expressed sympathy for the French Revolution, declaring that he wished to see “the New World regenerate the Old.” He believed that the French Revolution embodied many of the same principles that had animated the American struggle for independence.5

President George Washington ultimately chose a different course. Rather than entering the conflict, he committed the United States to a policy of neutrality between the European belligerents.6 The New World would not be drawn into the struggles of the Old.

Washington feared that foreign rivalries would inevitably divide the young republic. In his Farewell Address he warned:

At first glance, Washington’s counsel might suggest that the United States sought complete detachment from the affairs of the wider world, content to remain peacefully within its own hemisphere. Such an interpretation, however, would be misleading. Even in its earliest decades, the republic expanded dramatically—through diplomacy, territorial purchases, and war alike. The acquisition of new lands from European powers, conflicts with Native American tribes, and eventual war with Mexico all testified that the young republic possessed ambitions extending well beyond the boundaries it had inherited at independence.

A Growing Country: Liberty And Power

The question was therefore never whether America would shape the world around it. Rather, it was how the nation’s commitment to liberty would coexist with its growing power and expanding interests. The idea of America as an expanding nation became deeply ingrained in the national imagination during the nineteenth century. Organizations such as Young America and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which envisioned an American republic stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, reached the height of their influence during the 1840s, and 1850s. Expansion was not merely regarded as a matter of policy but increasingly as the nation’s historical destiny.

Few articulated that vision more forcefully than Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Advocating the organization of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, Douglas proclaimed:

In effect, the Illinoisan Democrat maintained that the law of natural increase governed the republic itself and that no man possessed the authority to arrest its growth. To confine a growing republic within fixed borders would be as futile as expecting a growing child to wear the same clothes throughout his life. The train of destiny, in Douglas’s view, waited for no man.

His great error, however, was failing to recognize that territorial expansion was magnifying the republic’s deepest internal divisions. Every new territory raised the same contentious question: would it enter the Union as free soil or slave soil? Expansion did not resolve the sectional conflict. It intensified it.

Douglas’s most formidable political rival, Abraham Lincoln, understood this reality. Responding to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln warned:

Lincoln’s objection was not to territorial growth itself but to the expansion of slavery into those territories. The nation’s westward march could not remain politically neutral when every new acquisition threatened to upset the delicate constitutional balance between free and slave states. The conflict that Douglas hoped to settle through popular sovereignty instead hastened the nation toward disunion, civil war, and Reconstruction.

A World Power: Responsibilities And Rights

By the opening decades of the twentieth century, the American debate had shifted. The great questions were no longer primarily about continental expansion but about the conduct of foreign policy in an increasingly interconnected world. The United States had emerged from the Civil War reunited, industrialized, and rapidly becoming a global power.

Writing in the aftermath of the First World War, Elihu Root, who had served as both Secretary of War and Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, reflected upon what he saw as the changing relationship between democracy and war:

Root’s observations reflected a profound transformation in democratic government. In earlier generations, rulers often initiated wars with limited public consultation. Modern democracies, however, depended upon the participation, consent, and sacrifice of entire populations. If the people were expected to bear the burdens of war, they increasingly demanded a voice in deciding whether those wars should be fought.

This did not mean that wars had ceased to be deliberate instruments of national policy. President James K. Polk’s war with Mexico, for example, was undertaken consciously to advance the territorial ambitions of the United States. Although controversial even in its own day, Polk’s political maneuvering ultimately achieved its intended objective.11 War had long preceded democracy—and, if we take the fighting of ants into account—indeed mankind itself. Democratic institutions had not abolished war; they had at best merely transformed the manner in which free peoples debated its necessity and legitimacy.

The Question In Our Own Time

In our own time, Americans have grown increasingly weary of prolonged foreign wars. While few advocate complete withdrawal from the world, there is a palpable desire to reduce the nation’s military commitments abroad. If the nineteenth century was preoccupied with the fetters upon territorial expansion, the twenty-first is preoccupied with the fetters of foreign entanglements. Destiny, it seems, has either outgrown us—or we have outgrown the expansive conception of destiny that once animated the republic.

The public’s reaction to the current war with Iran illustrates this changing mood. Opposition to the conflict was evident from its inception and has only grown as the war has continued. Many Americans now invoke the words of John Quincy Adams, spoken in his celebrated Independence Day address of 1821:

Every self-respecting nation must attend first to its own interests. The cause that most naturally appeals to the ordinary citizen is his own rather than that of the stranger. Yet Adams’s famous dictum is too often quoted in isolation, detached from the broader argument of the speech and from the statesman’s own career. Adams was, after all, the principal architect of the Monroe Doctrine, which warned the European powers against further colonization and intervention in the Western Hemisphere. His conception of American restraint was therefore neither passive nor indifferent.

Indeed, in the very same address Adams declared:

America, in Adams’s vision, was not to become a crusading empire, forever marching abroad in pursuit of every righteous cause. Yet neither was it to become morally detached from the struggles of free peoples beyond its shores. It could champion its own interests while still recognizing the justice of liberty elsewhere. Restraint did not require indifference, nor did sympathy require military intervention.

This distinction has become increasingly blurred within contemporary debates over American foreign policy. In their understandable desire to free the United States from costly and often fruitless military commitments, some advocates of non-intervention have drifted beyond prudence into a broader indifference toward the fate of liberty abroad. To reject unnecessary wars is one thing; to cease caring whether free peoples succeed or perish is quite another.

The American tradition has never rested comfortably at either extreme. Thomas Paine proclaimed that the American Revolution was “the cause of all mankind.” George Washington cautioned against foreign influence while preserving the nation’s independence of action. John Quincy Adams warned against searching abroad for monsters to destroy, even as he affirmed that America’s sympathies belonged with every people striving for freedom. Throughout its history, the republic has continually wrestled with the relationship between universal principles and national interests.

Two hundred and fifty years after its founding, that debate remains unresolved. Nor should we expect it to be. The United States has always been both an ordinary nation, charged with protecting its own security and prosperity, and an extraordinary experiment whose ideals have inspired peoples far beyond its borders. The tension between those two identities is not a contradiction to be eliminated but a permanent feature of the American experiment.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from two and a half centuries of American history, it is that liberty has never belonged to America alone. It has always been both a national inheritance and an aspiration that is expressed outside her own borders. The challenge for each generation is not to choose permanently between restraint and engagement, but to preserve the wisdom to distinguish between defending liberty and attempting to impose it. That task, no less than in 1776, remains the enduring work of a free people.

They symbolized You in many varied visions;

yet You are a Unity containing all allegories…

Aged on judgement day and virile on the day of battle,

like a man of war whose powers are many.1

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

We thought it was the Judgement-day…

Till God called, ‘No;

It’s gunnery practice out at sea

Just as before you went below;

The world is as it used to be2

The Silencing of the Guns

The day of judgement has arrived after long months of war, blockade, and tumult. The Islamic Republic of Iran, far from either disintegrating or being overthrown in a mass popular revolt, has withstood the storm. The bow of Elam hath been battered though not shattered by its Israeli and American foes. Its economy, already weakened by years of sanctions, entered a deeper crisis during the war. Citizens faced shrinking wages and soaring prices for basic goods and services.3 A survey published by an Iranian governmental official showed that 60 percent of his fellow citizens believed that social conditions would not improve in the future and expressed dissatisfaction over economic conditions.4 Despite this deep domestic unease, the country remained intact and even succeeded in asserting its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s blockade and the war had global ramifications, slowing economic growth, sending oil and other goods prices spiking abroad.5 Iran ended the war possessing significant missile launching capabilities.6

The Deal

Now, amid a candle lit dinner in the vaunted palace of Versailles, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an instrument that offered a way out of the war. This extension of the ceasefire was a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding between the Americans and the Iranians.7 It was, however, only a provisional arrangement intended to pave the way for a comprehensive settlement that would permanently end the state of conflict on all fronts, including Lebanon.8 On that score, the agreement called for the “ensuring of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon” through a cessation of hostilities in the war-torn country.9

There is a certain irony in this demand being championed by the Iranian leadership. Hezbollah, Iran’s principal proxy in Lebanon, had long opposed Lebanese-Israeli negotiations intended to secure precisely that objective. Nor had it refrained from interfering in Lebanese affairs when its ambassador was declared persona non grata.10 More fundamentally, Hezbollah has spent decades undermining Lebanese sovereignty by drawing the country—often against the wishes of its government—into foreign conflicts, from Syria to repeated and costly confrontations with Israel11 The point being is that Iran wishes to preserve and strengthen Hezbollah is not, contrary to the analysis of some pundits12, to the benefit of the Lebanese people or state, or even its Christians.13

The anchorite— Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the last and luckless Ayatollah—has performed well in office by the simple fact of his survival. The succession crisis that accompanied his ascent to his father’s proverbial throne was no easy trial. It unfolded amid a sustained Israeli-American campaign targeting senior Iranian leaders throughout the war. Israeli missiles had, after all, killed his father and nearly claimed his own life.14 Yet all of this raises a more fundamental question: why did the war begin in the first place?

The Beginnings of the War: A Return to Yesterday

The object of the war was to overthrow the Islamist regime that has been in power since 1979. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly argued in a meeting with President Donald Trump on February 11^th that joint operations against Iran would in short order achieve the decapitation of the country’s leadership, the destruction of their military capabilities, and the replacement of the regime by a secular leadership. The Israeli premier downplayed the chances of Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz by stating that the opening military campaign would sever the country’s capability to do that.

Trump, despite misgiving voiced by members of the cabinet and his own military staff, became committed to this vision.15 Fresh from ousting and capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump may have felt that this enterprise would have gone in a similarly rapid and orderly fashion. An additional element that may have pulled Trump into this operation was his angst over to put an end to Iranian nuclear ambition in a manner that was dramatic, decisive, and final. He may have had, like Netanyahu, misgivings over the effectiveness of diplomacy to resolve the issue in the long term. The diplomacy with Iran conducted in the lead-up to the war suggested that the United States was operating less from a bargaining position than from an ultimatum.

It is obvious why Israel would want to end the Iranian regime. Iran constitutes a peer rival for Israel in the region with a history of backing forces16 that seek not just to achieve regime change in Israel itself but end any form of Jewish expression of sovereignty in the land of their forefathers. The Iranian regime itself has made an existentially hostile position the foundational tenant of its national and supranational ideology. This has been the long-standing position of the Khomeinist clerisy in Iran long before their ascent to power in 1979.17 “Israel wants there to be no Qur’an in Iran. Israel wants there to be no clerics in Iran. Israel wants there to be no Islam in Iran,” the revolutionary cleric said in a speech from 1963.18

This pitching of Israel as the arch-nemesis to not just Iran but Islam itself speaks to the level of ideological and theological hostility articulated by the founder of the regime. An expansionist and anti-Zionist worldview are woven into Iran’s current constitution,19 further highlighting the structural nature of this ideological-theological mindset. An Iran that is ready to normalize relations with Israel and end its twilight existential struggle is likely not to be one that has this regime intact.

Clashing with Iran under Israeli and American calculus was therefore more than a matter of immediate policy. To the Israeli mind, the careful logic of deterrence they previously constructed was folly given that it led to a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7^th, 2023, and the activation of Iranian proxies against Israel. The war and the attempt to change the regime were conceived as instruments for bringing a decades-long contest to an end. For Netanyahu, the issue possessed an existential character. The Islamic Republic had long defined itself through opposition to Israel’s continued existence and had supported forces committed to that negatory objective. Trump, for his part, appears to have viewed the Iranian question as one of those problems that could not be indefinitely managed, postponed, or contained. The destruction of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the remaking of the regional order promised not merely a strategic victory but a place in history. Both men, whatever their differing motivations, seem to have acted upon the conviction that they stood before a decisive historical moment.

In this way they may have mirrored a sentiment once expressed by Oswald Spengler. Reflecting upon the forces that move history, he wrote:

Whatever one thinks of Spengler’s philosophy, the war against Iran was not launched by men who regarded themselves merely as administrators of an existing order. Netanyahu and Trump alike appear to have believed that they stood before a historical question that could no longer be deferred. Yet they were not wholly creatures of destiny in Spengler’s sense. The decision to wage war by these elderly leaders was animated not merely by existential fears and visions of historical transformation but also by the expectation that a decisive victory would produce tangible political goods: the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat, the reordering of the regional balance of power, and the emergence of—if not “world-peace” then— a more secure and peaceful Middle East. In this respect they combined the statesman’s sense of destiny with the modern conviction that history can be consciously directed toward desirable ends.

Having arrived at the judgement—or near-judgement—of what the desired end state ought to be, dissent from this vision became something to be dismissed or derided rather than seriously debated. Contrary evidence and alternative courses of action could be minimized or explained away. As one political scientist observed while chronicling the decision-making process behind the 2003 Iraq War:

This framework helps explain why Trump dismissed opponents of the war as “fools.”22 The issue was not merely a disagreement over strategy but a clash between fundamentally different understandings of the moment itself. For those who believed a historic opportunity had arrived, hesitation appeared less like prudence and more like a failure of imagination.

Reality, however, collided hard with that judgement. An aerial campaign alone was always unlikely to oust a regime from power.23 A capable ground force was a necessary—though not sufficient—condition for such an undertaking. Yet the political environment in the United States was hostile to a prolonged war from the beginning, and congressional support for the escalation and the waging of the armed contest steadily weakened.24 Eventually, Trump, proving his transactional character over judgmental nature, reversed course and started cajoling Netanyahu to show restraint in Lebanon and in dealings with Iran.25

The Unraveling of the War: A Rush to Judgement

The judgement delivered by events proved harsher than the assumptions that guided the war’s architects. As the British military analyst Andrew Fox observed:

The convoluted machinations of the regime change operation encountered further obstacles when Trump withdrew the Kurdish invasion force from the equation at the last moment due to Turkish objections.27 In broad terms, Iran suffered severe damage, but the regime remained intact and continued to exercise control over its territory.

More significantly, the war altered perceptions of power across the Middle East. Great powers are defined not merely by their ability to project force but also by their capacity to shape strategic outcomes and control critical arteries of commerce. The failure to decisively resolve the contest over Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors, exposed limits to American military dominance.

It was within this context that Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran, declared in a now-deleted statement that his country had emerged from the conflict as “truly a superpower.”28 Although the claim was rhetorical, it reflected a broader perception that Iran had survived a confrontation with a still-formidable military power while preserving its strategic position. Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, expressed a similar assessment:

Iran’s aforementioned ability to retain influence over Hormuz contributed significantly to this perception. The Gulf states, while unwilling to simply align themselves with Tehran, have increasingly recognized the necessity of managing relations with Iran. Their outreach reflects not necessarily trust but strategic adaptation: the desire to avoid becoming targets in a future confrontation. Here perhaps lay one of the war’s great paradoxes: Iran had been reduced yet magnified. Militarily battered, economically strained, and deprived of key assets, it nevertheless emerged in the eyes of many observers as more consequential than before. Survival itself became a form of power. By enduring a confrontation that many expected would cripple the Islamic Republic, Tehran transformed resilience into prestige, converting weakness into a new source of influence.

Yet prestige has its limits, even in the Gulf. While Iran’s survival and continued influence over the Strait of Hormuz may have enhanced its standing in the strategic imagination of the region, they have not eliminated the incentives of neighboring states to hedge against Iranian power. This is why Gulf states have sought to diversify their trade routes and reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.30 Proposed alternatives include expanded land corridors through Israel, Syria, and Turkey, creating new commercial pathways that could reduce vulnerability to future disruption.31

The Gulf states’ search for alternatives to Hormuz reflects a recognition that even strategic victories can produce unintended consequences. The very campaign intended to reshape the regional order may have accelerated a different transformation: the perception of Iran as a durable regional power. Yet Iran itself may now confront the same temptation that has undone many powers before it: the belief that survival under pressure proves historical destiny. The vultures of hubris may yet leave their nests in Washington and Jerusalem—but they may also find their way to Tehran. A state that emerges from conflict strengthened can still overestimate its own power, mistake temporary advantage for permanent ascendancy, and invite the very coalition or resistance it sought to avoid. Should Iranian leaders misinvest the political stature gained from the conflict—diverting resources toward foreign ambitions, military expansion, or ideological projects while neglecting chronic economic malaise, water shortages, corruption, and declining living standards—they may discover that external success cannot indefinitely compensate for domestic failure. In such a scenario, the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic would not come from foreign adversaries but from renewed and widespread popular dissent at home, as ordinary Iranians question why the fruits of endurance have once again failed to improve their daily lives.

Similarities to the Suez Crisis in 1956

There is something in the present crisis that evokes a faint reminiscence of a past event: flagging imperial powers electing to intervene in a Middle Eastern conflict over a vital maritime artery, and temporarily converging with Israel to do so. Those imperial powers were France and Great Britain. Their target was Egypt, whose young and ambitious leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had nationalized the Suez Canal—a project financed and long controlled by British and French interests, and regarded as central to their strategic and economic lifelines.

For British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Nasser appeared as a new Hitler, his seizure of the canal interpreted not as an isolated act but as the opening move in a broader expansionist design.32 For the Israelis, however, the casus belli was more immediate and concrete. Egypt had imposed a blockade on Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran, armed and financed fedayeen units conducting cross-border raids, and was receiving modern Soviet weaponry. While Nasser’s early posture toward the Palestinian question had been indifferent rather than ideological, his rhetoric and policy soon hardened into a more confrontational stance. “Egypt has decided to dispatch her heroes, the disciples of Pharaoh and the sons of Islam, and they will cleanse the land of Palestine…There will be no peace on Israel’s border because we demand vengeance, and vengeance is Israel’s death,” he declared in a 1955 speech.33

The war itself revealed both the strengths and limits of the coalition arrayed against Egypt. The Israel Defense Forces achieved rapid operational success in the Sinai, seizing the entire peninsula in a matter of days and decisively defeating Egyptian forces in the field. Britain and France, while not defeated militarily in direct engagement, failed to secure their strategic objectives: the canal could not be held or brought under political control, and Egyptian obstruction, combined with international pressure, rendered the operation untenable.34 The crisis escalated into a diplomatic rupture, as the United States under President Eisenhower applied intense financial pressure on Britain—most notably through threats to sterling stability and loan restrictions—forcing a ceasefire and withdrawal.35

For Israel, Eisenhower’s intervention came with a trade: withdrawal from Sinai in exchange for American-backed guarantees of freedom of navigation through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran. Yet when Egypt reimposed its blockade in 1967, those assurances proved politically unenforceable or too inconvenient to implement.36 The brief Anglo-Israeli convergence dissolved, and the Suez Crisis came to symbolize, for Britain, the erosion of their great-power status.

Egypt, for its part, overreached in its attempt to translate control over the canal and leadership of Arab nationalism into broader strategic dominance. While Nasser emerged from the crisis with enhanced regional prestige, the project of pan-Arab consolidation ultimately failed to materialize in durable institutional form. Control of a vital waterway did not translate into systemic great-power transformation, and the ambitions it was meant to serve remained unfulfilled.

In the current Iran crisis, a structurally similar question has re-emerged, albeit in a different technological and geopolitical register: whether influence over strategic arteries—this time not a single canal but a dispersed architecture of maritime chokepoints, proxy corridors, and regional interdiction capabilities—can be translated into durable regional primacy. Like Egypt in the 1950s, Iran occupies a position in which geography, disruption capacity, and ideological narrative intersect, producing moments of leverage that are difficult to convert into stable hierarchy.

The comparison is not one of scale or symmetry, but of structure. At Suez, control over a singular, globally indispensable waterway created the illusion that coercive leverage could be elevated into a hegemonic political reordering. In the Iranian case, the Strait of Hormuz and the wider maritime and overland networks of the region generate a similar perception: that sustained pressure on energy flows and regional transit can be leveraged into a reshaped balance of power. Yet in both instances, the constraint lies in the same underlying reality—the international system absorbs disruption without necessarily permitting the actor who generates it to dictate the outcome.

Just as Egypt discovered that control over the canal did not yield systemic transformation, Iran now confronts the possibility that resilience under pressure, and intermittent control over strategic disruption points, may generate prestige and bargaining power without resolving the deeper question of regional order. In both cases, what appears as ascendancy in moments of crisis risks proving less a transition to hegemony than a prolonged state of contested equilibrium.

There are also structural parallels in this historic episode37 that extend to the evolving relationship between Israel and the United States, and more broadly to the limits of American power itself. At Suez, the United States did not merely halt a military operation; it revealed the extent to which even close allies could be compelled to reverse course when their actions threatened wider systemic stability. Britain and France discovered that their ability to project force was no longer sufficient to sustain strategic outcomes without American acquiescence. The alliance did not collapse, but its hierarchy was exposed.

A similar tension is increasingly visible in contemporary Middle Eastern crises. Israel’s operational autonomy and immediate security imperatives often intersect with broader American concerns—regional escalation control, energy market stability, alliance management, and deterrence credibility—without fully aligning with them. The result may not be an outright rupture,38 but friction: moments in which tactical convergence gives way to strategic divergence over the acceptable limits, duration, and consequences of force.

Within this framework, the Iran confrontation becomes less a bilateral or even regional contest than a test of the constraints embedded within American power itself. As in the Suez era, the United States retains a superior military capacity, but its ability to translate that capacity into durable political outcomes is mediated by a dense lattice of global dependencies: energy markets, Chinese and Russian counter-positioning, and the political costs of prolonged engagement.

Seen from this angle, the current crisis does not simply echo Suez as a historical analogy. It reproduces its deeper structure: the exposure of limits within alliance systems, and the recurring gap between military capability and political resolution. In both moments, the central question is not who can act, but who can convert action into order—and at what cost that conversion breaks down.

An Ending And A Re-beginning

The judgement of history, however, rarely arrives in the form men expect. The opening of this essay began with two visions of judgement: one divine, where all contradictions are gathered into a higher unity, and one human, as captured by Hardy on the eve of the First World War. In “Channel Firing”, Hardy reflected upon the terrible irony of men approaching catastrophe believing they stood before a world-transforming moment, only to discover that the guns that shook the earth had not brought the final reckoning they imagined. The dead believed judgement day had arrived; G-d’s answer was that it was only “gunnery practice out at sea.” The world, tragically, continued as before.

The war with Iran carried a similar expectation of historical finality. For Israel and the United States, the conflict was conceived as an opportunity to settle a decades-long struggle: to eliminate a nuclear threat, weaken an adversarial regime, and create a more secure regional order. For Iran, survival itself became a source of renewed confidence and a demonstration that pressure from superior military powers could be endured. Yet the outcome suggests something more complicated than victory or defeat. The regime survived, but the strategic environment it inhabits has been transformed. Its adversaries demonstrated enormous destructive power, but also discovered limits to their ability to impose political outcomes.

The danger after such a conflict is that each side mistakes survival, endurance, or tactical success for historical vindication. The same hubris that leads powers to believe they can command history can later lead their opponents to believe they have become its chosen instruments. No power escapes the judgement of history.

The final verdict, therefore, may not belong to those who believed they had reached judgement day, but to history itself. The guns have fallen silent, but silence is not the same as resolution. The world may appear, as Hardy wrote, to have returned to what it was before—but beneath the surface, the forces unleashed by war continue to move irrespective of whether a ceasefire deal is reached or not. And still, what was imagined as the day of judgement reveals itself, once again, as only the day of battle.

8

See clause one of the deal in the following article: Shaked, O. (2026, June 17). Full memorandum of understanding between US and Iran unveiled. Israel HaYom. https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/06/17/full-memorandum-of-understanding-between-us-and-iran-unveiled/. As for the Lebanese front and its causes, see Hulkower, I. (2026, April 5). Lumbering Toward the Litani: The Other Front In The Iran War. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Lumbering Toward the Litani

[G-d] rebukes the sea and dries it up…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

10

Christou, W. (2026, June 4). Hezbollah rejects Israel-Lebanon truce as Trump scrambles to end Iran war. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/04/israel-lebanon-renew-ceasefire-hezbollah-trump-iran-deal-middle-east-us; Hulkower, I. (2026, April 5). Lumbering Toward the Litani: The Other Front In The Iran War. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Lumbering Toward the Litani

[G-d] rebukes the sea and dries it up…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

11

See the section labelled Hezbollah’s High Noon in Hulkower, I. (2025, May 15). Pity The Nation Revisited Part II: Lebanese Conflagrations And A Hope. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Pity The Nation Revisited Part 2

The voice of the LORD is power…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

14

Smith, H. (2026, March 11). Mojtaba Khamenei was hurt in strike that killed his father, Iran’s Cyprus ambassador confirms. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/mojtaba-khamenei-was-hurt-in-strike-that-killed-his-father-irans-cyprus-ambassador-confirms; Hulkower, I. (2026, March 8). The End of Days: Ayatollahist Iran in Peril. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

The End of Days

And Jacob called his sons and said, “Come together that I may tell you what is to befall you in the end of days…

Read more

6 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Ilan Hulkower

; Mansour, M. (2026, March 3). Who was Ali Larijani, Iran’s philosopher-security chief killed by Israel? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/3/who-is-ali-larijani-the-iranian-official-promising-a-lesson-to-the-us.

26

Fox, A. (2025, May 23). Anatomy of a debacle. Andrew Fox. Substack.

Andrew Fox

Anatomy of a debacle

This piece has been weeks in the writing, awaiting a conclusion. Now we have it, this long article is an autopsy of the calamity we have watched unfold for the last few months. As with all my writing on the Iran War, I will keep this free. All I ask is that you share and subscribe if you do not already…

Read more

3 months ago · 288 likes · 37 comments · Andrew Fox

37

Suez trap and its resemblance to the Hormuz crisis were noted in Ferguson, N. (2024, April 10). How great powers lose wars they’re winning. Substack.

Niall Ferguson's Time Machine

How Great Powers Lose Wars They're Winning

For nearly five weeks, President Donald Trump has bombarded Iran with missiles and bombs—and the American public with contradictory messaging about the aims and duration of this conflict…

Read more

5 months ago · 82 likes · 4 comments · Niall Ferguson

[G-d] rebukes the sea and dries it up,
And makes all rivers fail;
Bashan and Carmel languish,
And the blossoms of Lebanon wither.1

I shall never again hear the songs of Lebanon, except in dreams.

You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty… Poets of the West think of Lebanon as a legendary place, forgotten since the passing of David and Solomon and the Prophets.

If Lebanon were not my country, I would have chosen it to be.2

Lebanon Erupts

As the war with Iran continues to rage unabated, another front has opened. Lebanon has once again become a battleground in a contest between foreign powers. Hezbollah’s—along with Amal’s—decision to attack the Jewish state from southern Lebanon on March 2nd sealed this fate. This unilateral action was taken in flagrant violation of the Lebanese government’s wishes. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called it an “irresponsible and suspicious act” that threatened the country’s fragile security. He denounced those responsible for engaging in adventurism contrary to Lebanon’s national interests.3

Hezbollah has long dragged the country into wars it did not seek. That Hezbollah’s rocket fire originated from southern Lebanon further embarrassed the national government and exposed an uncomfortable truth. In January, Beirut had proclaimed that the entire south had been disarmed, as it pressed for Israeli withdrawal from territories still occupied after the last war.4 Jerusalem had expressed skepticism at the time. Now, that claim has been discredited, and what remains of Beirut’s credibility lies in shambles. The supposed disarmament of Hezbollah was a façade—and the government’s failure to heed repeated warnings about honoring its agreements with Israel is now coming due.

President Joseph Aoun, in the aftermath of Hezbollah’s attack, proposed direct talks with Israel to avert an impending invasion and even hinted at the possibility of normalization. But the offer came too late. Lebanon—having failed to implement disarmament measures for decades and unable to prevent non-state actors from attacking Israel since 1968—lacks credibility to enforce such commitments. In contrast, Jerusalem signaled interest in negotiations only after Hezbollah ceased its attacks.5

Lebanon’s limited sovereignty was laid bare in mid-March when it declared Iran’s ambassador, Mohammad Reza Shibani, persona non grata and ordered him to leave for interfering in its internal affairs—only for Tehran to openly defy the order. Rather than depart by the deadline, Shibani remained in Beirut with the backing of Hezbollah and its allies, turning what should have been a sovereign assertion of diplomatic authority into a public embarrassment. The standoff exposed not just Beirut’s inability to enforce its own directives, but the extent to which external powers and domestic factions can override the Lebanese state’s will without consequence.6

Rearmament Ignored

The Lebanese government had been warned of this outcome given its pattern of inaction. Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, stated in September 2025:

I would say, the Lebanese – and I don’t mean this is [in] a disrespectful way – all they [the government] do is talk. There has never been one act [to disarm Hezbollah]. We told them: ‘Do you want our help? We’ll give you our help.’ We gave them a playbook, they can’t get there…No [the Lebanese cannot enforce its own pledge to disarm Hezbollah]. Absolutely not. So we said: ‘Fine, we’re not going to execute, you know who is going to execute? Walk across that border, do you see where Jerusalem is? Jerusalem is going to take care of Hizbullah for you.’7

In short, Lebanon’s usual political inertia was no longer sufficient. Israeli patience had already been exhausted by decades of empty assurances.

The aftermath of the nearly two-month long Hezbollah-Israel war in 2024 left the Shia organization in a state of disarray. Yet, Hezbollah was, despite some assessments by some Israeli officials to the contrary,8 neither dead nor defunct.9 It had been weakened—but not eliminated.

Iran reportedly dispatched roughly 100 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel to reorganize and retrain Hezbollah following the ceasefire. The group has since been reshaped into a leaner, more disciplined force—closer to its earlier incarnation than the larger, less selective organization that expanded after the Syrian civil war.10 In this respect, the renewed Hezbollah resembles its earlier structure, with a semi-cellular command system and selective recruitment of individuals suited to operate within such a framework.

Hezbollah from 1985–2006 selectively recruited a relatively small but elite force, composed of individuals “least culturally regular” within broader Arab society—those best able to function within its unconventional organizational structure.11 Kenneth Pollack, a CIA analyst of modern Arab warfare, further suggested that Shiite forces may be more inclined toward initiative than their Sunni counterparts. As he observed: “It is certainly true that Iranian forces showed greater initiative and battlefield innovation than the Iraqis ever did.” 12

Israeli Aims And Ambitions

Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, has stated that Israel intends to establish a buffer zone extending to the Litani River. Civilians displaced in that area will not be permitted to return until conditions stabilize—effectively conditioning territorial access on security guarantees.13 Other figures, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have gone further, arguing that disarming Hezbollah is insufficient and advocating for more sweeping measures, including annexation up to the Litani.14

While such statements suggest a maximalist approach, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have described their mission more cautiously: part of a long-term effort to pressure Hezbollah into disarmament. Since hostilities resumed, the IDF estimates that roughly 1,000 Hezbollah fighters have been killed,15 and Israeli forces have advanced more quickly than in the 2024 offensive,16 while sustaining 11 fatalities.17

This does not mean the conflict is nearing an end. Hezbollah has repeatedly demonstrated resilience and tactical adaptability. The IDF itself has acknowledged overestimating Hezbollah’s degradation in the past, as well as underestimating the group’s ability to recover.18 Hezbollah is expected to respond through guerrilla tactics, which depend on local support. Yet that support is already strained, as approximately one million Lebanese have fled the south.19Local leaders suggest that while evacuation orders are widespread, certain communities—particularly Druze and Christians—may remain, while Shiite populations, who form Hezbollah’s political and military base, are being displaced.20

Even if pushed out of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah could continue fighting from other regions beyond direct Israeli control. Reports suggest that Israel may be considering sharing disarmament responsibilities with Syria—tasking Damascus with operations outside the south.21 Such an arrangement if true would highlight the pitiable conditions of the country. Once more, glittering conquerors would stride across a land dissolving into mercurial fragments, each vying over the nation’s corpse.

Such a division would represent a dramatic upheaval, given the lack of formal relations between Israel and Syria, as well as the historical context: in the 1980s, Israel actively worked to counter Syrian attempts to dominate Lebanon. The development would be surprising given questions about Syria’s current leadership and its commitment to confronting Hezbollah.22 It is possible that these reports are mere rumors—or perhaps a strategic signal intended to compel the Lebanese army to finally act on disarmament.

Lament Over The Litani

Lumbering toward the Litani, the war advances not as a swift storm but as a slow, grinding force—like a river forced to fail, a landscape where the blossoms of Lebanon wither under pressure. What once seemed distant and mythic, the Lebanon of poets and prophets, now stands at the center of a very present reckoning. The songs of Lebanon are no longer confined to memory or dream; they are strained, interrupted, and drowned out by the machinery of conflict.

So, the question lingers, unresolved: not only whether Lebanon will endure this moment, but whether anything recognizable as a coherent victor—foreign or domestic—will emerge at all. For wars of this nature rarely conclude with clean lines or decisive reckonings. They leave instead a residue of competing claims, partial control, and lingering instability, where no single hand can fully impose order, and no single narrative can fully claim the outcome.

Lumbering toward the Litani may mark movement, but not necessarily resolution. It may mark advance, but not clarity. And in a land already stretched between memory and rupture, the outcome may not be a triumph so much as a prolonged uncertainty—where the question of who has won remains as unsettled as the ground itself.

5

Gebeily, M. (2026, March 13). Lebanon’s offer for direct talks with Israel falls on deaf ears, sources say. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanons-offer-direct-talks-with-israel-falls-deaf-ears-sources-say-2026-03-13/. On the history of southern Lebanon being used as a conduct to attack Israel, see Hulkower, I. (2025, May 8). Pity The Nation Revisited Part 1: A Lamentation Of Lebanese Politics. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Pity The Nation Revisited Part 1

It is I who have climbed the highest mountains…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Ilan Hulkower

. On Lebanon’s failure to implement previous disarmament schemes, see Hulkower, I. (2025, September 22). The Vexing Problem Of Lebanon: A Farewell To Arms? Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

The Vexing Problem Of Lebanon

The arid desert shall be glad…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Ilan Hulkower

.

7

Hulkower, I. (2025, October 12). A Pause or A Peace? Gaza Between Ruin and Renewal. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

A Pause or a Peace?

Sometimes there is a phenomenon of which they say, “Look, this one is new!”—it occurred long since, in ages that went by before us. The earlier ones are not remembered; so too those that will occur later will no more be remembered than those that will occur at the very end…

Read more

a year ago · 2 likes · Ilan Hulkower

.

10

i24NEWS. (2026, March 22). How Iran rebuilt Hezbollah and planned coordinated missile attacks years in advance. https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/defense/artc-how-iran-rebuilt-hezbollah-and-planned-coordinated-missile-attacks-years-in-advance. On the effect of the Syrian civil war on the organization, see footnote 65 in Hulkower, I. (2025, May 15). Pity the Nation Revisited Part 2: Lebanese Conflagration And A Hope. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Pity The Nation Revisited Part 2

The voice of the LORD is power…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

14

The Times of Israel. (2026, March 24). Smotrich says Litani River should be Israel’s new border with Lebanon. https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-says-litani-river-should-be-israels-new-border-with-lebanon/.

It should be noted that Smotrich has expressed similar views regarding Gaza; however, these statements have not thus far translated into official Israeli policy, as no annexation has been declared and no Jewish settlement has been established in that territory. Nevertheless, this perspective was foreshadowed in my earlier analysis of the Lebanese situation, in which I observed:

“The heart of Lebanon’s problem with Israel is not territorial—it is the inability to control its own borders and to prevent armed groups from launching attacks from its soil. So long as this persists, Israeli intervention will remain a recurring certainty. And the more frequently Israel is drawn in, the more ideological—and potentially permanent—its presence may become. Some may argue that Israel would be justified in staying in southern Lebanon as a buffer. Others may point to Biblical claims. But it would be wiser for Lebanon not to test Israel’s patience, already in short supply.”

See Hulkower, I. (2025, May 15). Pity the Nation Revisited Part 2.

Ilan Hulkower

Pity The Nation Revisited Part 2

The voice of the LORD is power…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

And Jacob called his sons and said, “Come together that I may tell you what is to befall you in the end of days.”1

New-born, the mage re-summons stronger spells, and spirits

With dazzling darkness clad about, and fiercer flame

Renewed by aeon-curtained slumber. All the powers

Of genii and Solomon the sage inherits;

And there, to blaze with blinding glory the bored hours,

He calls upon Shem-hamphorash, the nameless Name.2

An Ayatollah Orders His Tomb

The hoary high hierophant, clad in sacred black vestments, lay prostrate amid the inferno unleashed upon his compound in the early morning hours. Once proud, the long-ailing man had, like his state, been reduced. In those final moments his thoughts may have wandered, not to eternity but to earthly reckonings: the vanity of his long dominion, the jealousies of rivals he had not crushed, the power he had wielded yet perhaps not ruthlessly enough.

At the end of his days, it mattered not. The Phlegethon of fire consumed the grounds around him. His death came like a sentence from the heavens, delivered by mortal enemies through rubble and flame. The high priest of the Iranian state, Ali Khamenei, was not the only man to fall that day. In a grim reprise of the brief June war,3 several senior Iranian officials met similar fates at the hands of Israeli and American strikes.4

The Shi’a empire centered in the Islamic Republic of Iran, like its leadership, lay in ruins. Its vainglorious ambition to crown itself the hegemon of the Middle East had backfired catastrophically. Now the state—what remained of it—and the remnants of its leadership were locked in a twilight struggle for survival rather than supremacy.

The Persian Paroxysm

The dramatic decapitation strike on February 28 did not come from nowhere. Planning for a renewed campaign against Iran began among Israeli strategists just days after the conclusion of the 12-day war. Israeli officials concluded that the conflict had injured their rival but left it far from crippled. The target bank and scope of any future operation would need to be expanded accordingly.5

While the June war carried undertones of regime change, it was primarily framed as an operation to neutralize Iran’s nuclear capabilities.6 Regime change, Israeli planners reasoned, could wait for a more opportune moment. During the war, although some Iranian ballistic missiles penetrated the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow defenses, Israel had tested its adversary and found the performance wanting.7 The operation had, in effect, served as a pilot project—showcasing Iranian weaknesses while providing the U.S. administration political leverage to demand concessions, particularly on the nuclear front.8

Even Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian was candid about the Israeli advantage in the June war in a meeting with students and academics back in December. “It’s true that we had missiles, but theirs [Israel’s] were more numerous, more powerful, more accurate and easier to deploy,” he said.9 Iranian media also admitted to publishing fabricated reports of downed Israeli F-35s in what they described as a “rhetoric of weakness.”10

Pezeshkian expressed frustration and helplessness over deep systemic corruption. “I don’t know what to do, please don’t curse me,” he said. “I can’t do anything. Don’t curse me.” He lamented that this cycle of disasters had plagued Iran continuously since his first day in office.11

Indeed, Iran has long been mired in crisis: power outages, water shortages, and economic malaise have taken a toll, with infrastructure sacrificed to fund nuclear ambitions and proxy wars. The Axis of Resistance, which Tehran sponsored, was battered in the wake of the Hamas-Israel war, the collapse of Assadist Syria—largely due to Turkish maneuvers—and Israel’s victories over Hezbollah. Hamas itself had been significantly weakened in the Gaza Strip.12 It was as if the auguries were returning naught but ill-omens for the country.

Despite these setbacks, Iran doubled down, attempting to revive its waning influence. Leadership vowed to continue arming Hezbollah, even as Lebanon formally committed to disarmament.13Its ballistic program—a dual-use project capable of carrying nuclear payloads—was intensified. Regime officials openly discussed expanding the program’s range to include cities like New York and Washington, D.C.14One national security council member claimed this project had been in development for over twenty years.15 Nevertheless, a 2025 Defense Intelligence Agency report assessed that progress remained slow and that such long-range capabilities might not be achievable for another decade.16

This combination of rhetoric and policy escalation left the regime struggling with domestic priorities. The water crisis worsened, economic conditions deteriorated, and mass protests erupted in late December.17 Initially focused on economic grievances, the demonstrations quickly transformed into denunciations of the regime. Tehran, accusing protesters of foreign influence, responded with harsh crackdowns.18 In response, President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum: Iran must halt the suppression of its citizens and abandon its nuclear ambitions—or face further consequences.19

The Parley of Ashes

Diplomacy with Iran has always been a perilous endeavor. Even when the United States reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), intended as a temporary halt to Iran’s nuclear program, the agreement was repeatedly undermined by Tehran.20 Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, admitted in a 2019 live broadcast that the regime had no real intention of halting nuclear development through the deal. He confessed that Iran had misled other diplomats about its capabilities. “Not only we did not destroy the bridges [to further nuclear enrichment] behind us, we even made new bridges so that we could quickly revert to the previous position if necessary,” he said.21 Salehi reiterated these claims of deception in 2025, underscoring Tehran’s consistent pattern of dissembling duplicity in negotiations.22

In more recent years, talks between Iran and the Trump administration in the lead-up to the 12-day war failed to yield an acceptable arrangement regarding nuclear capacity. Prior to the conflict, Iran openly announced plans to expand its nuclear enrichment program, directly opposing American objectives.23 The Trump administration, in turn, sought a broader deal encompassing not only Iran’s nuclear program but also its ballistic missile capabilities.

From early to late February, U.S. and Iranian negotiators met to discuss terms. Iranian officials portrayed these discussions as serious and substantive.24 As late as February 26, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, while acknowledging remaining differences, claimed that “good progress” had been made linking Iran’s nuclear program to potential sanctions relief.25 Oman’s Foreign Minister similarly described the talks as encouraging, highlighting a key provision: Iran would forgo any ability to develop a nuclear weapon by agreeing to zero stockpiling of fissile material. He explained:

The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement. This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama’s time. This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don’t enrich.26

Even Israeli media took note of Tehran’s willingness to make concessions on the nuclear front, though some journalists deemed the offer too little, too late. One journalist observed regarding the Geneva proposal:

In mid-2025, if it had offered Washington a complete freeze on uranium nuclear enrichment for three years and the transportation of its highly enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for lifting financial sanctions, US President Donald Trump probably would have jumped at the opportunity, ignoring Israeli objections.27

Yet by that point, Iran’s bargaining position had weakened dramatically. Its lackluster performance in the June war, combined with mass domestic protests, rendered even generous offers insufficient in the eyes of American negotiators.28

From the U.S. perspective, the Iranians were often seen as playing games.29Steve Witkoff, a lead negotiator, recounted that early in the talks, the Iranian delegation boasted of possessing enough enriched material for eleven nuclear bombs and of the ability to circumvent oversight protocols. Beyond nuclear issues, Witkoff listed American demands: cessation of proxy sponsorship, termination of the ballistic program, and dismantling of naval assets.30 In effect, the U.S. sought to neuter Iran’s capacity for offensive action entirely. Such terms would be nearly impossible for any state to accept, as even a breakthrough on nuclear restrictions would remain incomplete without agreement on these broader strategic issues.

In the end, the talks collapsed. The February 28 strike that killed the Ayatollah and senior Iranian officials signaled that force, not diplomacy, would determine Iran’s fate. Unlike the June war, this campaign began with a joint American-Israeli operation on Iranian soil. President Trump heavily hinted that the operation’s ultimate objective was regime change in his national address at the outset of the conflict.31

Iran’s Strategic Calculus

The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the looming threat of a joint Israeli-American military operation triggered an existential response from the surviving leadership. They ordered their forces to close the Strait of Hormuz32, a critical oil and natural gas transit point, and directed drones and ballistic missiles not only at Israel but also at regional states hosting American forces.33

These actions aim to pressure U.S.-aligned states to halt the war and safeguard the regime’s survival. That Iran is pursuing such a high-cost strategy underscores the precarious state in which it finds itself: in matters of survival, all risks are deemed acceptable.34Yet these strikes have prompted speculation that neighboring states may shift from passive defense to more assertive postures.35

Although Qatar denied formally joining the conflict, its spokesperson did not entirely dismiss reports of limited retaliatory actions against Iran.36 Meanwhile, Iran has sought to distance itself from the political consequences of these strikes. “We have no intention of attacking neighboring countries,” the Iranian president asserted, calling for diplomacy even as missiles and drones targeted those same states.37

Anticipating shocks to its senior leadership, Iran empowered junior officers within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) with wartime decision-making authority. “Every province is a mosaic, and the commanders have the ability and power to make decisions,” noted Farzin Nadimi, a defense specialist at the Washington Institute. “So, when they are cut off from their command in Tehran, they can still be able to function as a cohesive military force,” he added.38

This decentralized strategy carries inherent risks. Over a sustained period of isolation, it may lead to fragmentation among units and duplication of efforts, resulting in inefficiency and inconsistencies. Once the pre-determined target bank is exhausted, maintaining operational coherence could become increasingly difficult.

The critical question for Iran is whether it can endure sustained Israeli and American bombardments while maintaining sufficient offensive capacity to launch enough drones and missiles to strain the defenses of other states. The slackening rate of Iranian attacks since their peak on March 1 in the Middle East has raised doubts about this capability.39 Although Israel cannot be certain that all ballistic missile launches from Iran have ceased, it claims to have destroyed approximately 75 percent of Iran’s missile launchers.40

This ongoing war of attrition will ultimately test which will be exhausted first: Iran’s major offensive capabilities or the allied defensive networks. At the same time, the lull in missile barrages may partially reflect a deliberate strategy by Tehran to conserve war-making capacity for a protracted struggle. Only time will reveal the outcome.

Iranian calculations are informed by the stark reality that this is a life-and-death struggle for the regime. Officials have pledged to fight persistently41, if necessary, to restore a credible sense of deterrence against future attacks. In this context, high costs are deemed acceptable if they enhance the regime’s prospects of survival and retention of power.

Israel’s Strategic Objectives

Israeli calculations are shaped by both longstanding assumptions and a new strategic outlook. The current Iranian regime is viewed as fundamentally hostile, surrounding Israel with a “ring of fire” comprised of terrorist organizations and state actors intent on its erasure. Israeli policymakers have long regarded Iran’s nuclear program as carrying existential implications. After October 7th, the assumption that Israel could buy silence from its adversaries and accurately interpret their intentions was shattered.42 Containment, restraint, and deterrence had failed.

Previously, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been regarded by countries such as Qatar as a figure of restraint—a leader who “doesn’t do wars.”43 Now, Israel finds itself engaged in a serious conflict. Policymakers in Jerusalem exhibit what they describe as “a greater willingness to use force to prevent enemies from developing capabilities that threaten Israel.”44 This mindset reflects a Machiavellian logic, echoing Niccolò Machiavelli’s advice:

“[A] blunder ought never to be perpetrated to avoid war, because it is not to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage.”45

Half-measures, in this view, only invite further instability and bloodshed.46 It is this combination of existential anxiety and the perceived imperative to act from strength that has driven Israel into the current conflict.

From this perspective, at least three general objectives could be guiding Israeli strategy:

1. Limited degradation: Israel may be pursuing a “mowing-the-lawn” approach, systematically pruning Iranian military capabilities without seeking to topple the regime itself.

2. Regime collapse: Another possibility is that Israel seeks the disintegration of central authority in Iran. In this scenario, Jerusalem may not care who succeeds the current regime, so long as Iran becomes fragmented—potentially resembling a Syrian civil war.

3. Regime change: The third explanation is that Netanyahu is genuinely aiming for regime change. The goal would be a stable, united, and friendly Iranian government that is no longer hostile to Israel.

The first option aligns with how Netanyahu has generally approached conflicts: degrading enemy capabilities without seeking total defeat. This “limited campaign” approach guided Israeli operations in Gaza from 2009 to 2023.47 Its advantage here would be that Israel could theoretically pursue a similarly constrained campaign against Iran.

However, several factors make this unlikely. Mowing-the-lawn operations were feasible against Hamas, a terrorist entity controlling a small, neighboring territory with limited international recognition. Israel and Egypt could exert some control over what entered Gaza. Iran, by contrast, is distant, possesses far greater capacity and potential, and maintains close ties with China and Russia. An intervention risks drawing in other great powers, whereas Gaza carried much less of that danger.

There are also classical objections to this policy, which assumes that endless, controlled conflict is desirable. Machiavelli, for instance, might argue that it is always preferable for a prince to destroy an enemy swiftly and decisively, rather than slowly and hesitantly.48 Why strike twice or five times when one blow would suffice? By spacing out its wars with Iran, Israel risks inadvertently strengthening its foe, allowing it to learn from repeated encounters and adapt its strategies. Iran is not a stagnant society; it is capable of growth and strategic innovation.

Another perspective suggests that Israel seeks the collapse of a cohesive central authority in Iran. This viewpoint has surfaced in Israeli media—most notably endorsed by the staff of The Jerusalem Post, an anti-Netanyahu49 newspaper. The editors outlined policy recommendations for federalizing or partitioning Iran into smaller ethnic states, favoring partition over federalization and calling for guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish, and Balochi regions willing to break away.50Israeli clandestine support for a Kurdish uprising51 in Iran during the current conflict could be interpreted as part of this strategy.

The risks of such a policy are clear: an imploded Iran, though weakened, could become a zone of violent contention—not only among fragmented states within the country, but also between outside powers. Israel, which does not border Iran, would have limited ability to control the aftermath of such an implosion. The country that ultimately dominates this struggle for influence could easily be hostile to Israel. Alternatively, a united Iran could re-emerge, its population more hostile to the Jewish state and resentful of years marked by division and strife.

The final possibility—that Israel seeks regime change rather than collapse—also has evidentiary support. In his address announcing the operation, Netanyahu called on Iranian citizens of all ethnic backgrounds “to topple the regime of horrors that embitter your lives.”52More recently, he emphasized that his efforts were not aimed at “dividing Iran” but at freeing it from the tyrants of Tehran.53

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour observed a divergence in endgames between Israel and its Arab neighbors. For Mansour, it was clear that Israel envisions a new Iran, freed from the prison house in which it has long dwelled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Such a regime, friendly to Jews and to Israel, could be liberated from sanctions and emerge as a strong strategic partner. In contrast, Arab states fear that a strong Iranian state could become a rival competitor for investment and influence. For them, it is sufficient—if not ideal—for Iran to remain isolated, weakened, but stable.54

Yet words are cheap, and intentions may shift. The options outlined above could blend or evolve over time. As Dr. Dan Schueftan, an Israeli academic and advisor to multiple prime ministers, noted:

But if we don’t help to bring down this regime [in Iran] and maybe it will take 20 years, I don’t know. But at least constantly it must be perceived by its own people as a failure and constantly it must be prevented by force and there is no other way only by force from destroying the rest of the Middle East.55

Taken literally, and as current policy appears to follow, Israel could be engaged in multiple campaigns against Iran over decades, if necessary, to ultimately achieve its objective of ending the regime.

The American Question

The Trump administration’s justification for attacking Iran has been muddled and contradictory.56 Is the primary concern Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, or the nature of the regime itself? Will American forces take to the ground, or is this to remain an air campaign? The administration has struggled to answer these questions and present a unified, confident message to the public.

While Trump has called for the “unconditional surrender”57 of Iran and urged its people to overthrow the regime, he has at times also expressed a willingness to negotiate with the same leadership.58 Some of this can be read as preserving political options, yet these declarations unfold in a unique American context: unlike Israel, where consensus over the Iranian threat runs deep, the United States is war-weary after decades of conflict in the Middle East. The previous limited bombing of Fordow preserved much of Trump’s political coalition due to its brevity and restraint; a more sustained involvement, however, risks fracturing that alignment.

Skeptical, though still supportive voices of the administration questioned the need for this adventure.59 Among the new G.O.P. base, some expressed not only skepticism but a profound sense of betrayal. They reminded themselves that Trump had promised to be a different kind of president —a peace president who condemned needless Middle East wars—yet here he was, engaging in one.60

Richard Baris, an accomplished American pollster, was more blunt. He observed that his polling found that Americans were averse to the whole war. “The answer was ZERO. Americans demanded ZERO casualties because Americans did NOT support a war. That’s how stupid this was.,” he said.61War often loses support over time. The fact that his own base’s support for such a war was shaky at its onset puts him at great risk if Iran becomes a protracted quagmire. While both chambers of Congress rejected a war powers resolution that would have put a halt to American participation it did so only on very narrowly.62 Sustainable wars require broad political appeal. This war so far has failed to muster that even in the political arena.

The unpopular nature of the war does not bode well for Israeli-American relations. If Americans perceive that Israel is drawing them into its own conflicts, tensions in the alliance are likely to grow.63Public favor is fleeting: many cheer may from afar, but few stand firm when the consequences are real.

Israel risks a situation reminiscent of its 1956 operation against Egypt, when the Suez Crisis embroiled the country alongside Britain and France. That war, for the Jewish state, aimed to end Egyptian-sponsored fedayeen raids, lift the blockade on Israeli shipping, and neutralize the threat posed by Soviet-backed Egyptian weaponry. While Israel today views the operation as justified, Britain remembers the crisis far less fondly. The conflict ultimately cemented Israel’s ties to France until 1967,64 and some analysts argue that American intervention may have prompted Israeli policymakers to seriously consider developing nuclear weapons65 as a path toward strategic independence.

After the End of Days: The Implications of Failure or Success

Experienced political analysts will observe that air campaigns seldom lead to regime change. Aerial bombardment alone is unlikely to end the regime in and of itself. Andrew Fox, a military analyst, paints what the most likely scenario is:

The bombing campaign is militarily effective. Iran loses its navy, much of its missile force, and the Industrial base supporting them. Nuclear sites are damaged or made unusable. Parts of the internal-security system are affected. However, the regime does not collapse, or, more precisely, the clerical structure weakens while the coercive agencies remain functioning.66

For this to work, what is needed is an effectual presence on the ground. What is needed is mass defections from either Iran’s regular army or the IRGC or an external force entering the country. In theory, Iran’s mosaic strategy could prove useful here in creating an independent military force that defects. At the present moment, this has not happened so it is external force that is the most likely element that could force a regime change. Trump has not ruled out Americans having a boots-on-the-ground presence.67 Yet, this act might foreclose any chance Trump has to rebound with his base. Another country could serve that function but it is unlikely that the Gulf states would be particularly keen on invading Iran—to say nothing about their militaries being untested quantities or the potential rally-around-the-flag effect an Arab invasion would have on the Iranian people.

The war, whether triumphant or disastrous, would not mark the end of history in the Middle East. At most it would close one chapter in the long chronicle of Persian and Levantine power politics. The Islamic Republic born in revolution might meet its twilight, or it might survive in harsher and more militarized form. The presidency of Donald Trump might emerge vindicated by victory or scarred by a costly miscalculation.

Yet even if the conflict carried the appearance of apocalypse, it would not mark the end of history. Like the newborn mage of Clark Ashton Smith’s poetic imagination, the region would emerge from its aeon-curtained slumber to summon stronger spells, inheriting the ancient rivalries and ambitions that have shaped its politics for centuries. The powers once attributed to the wisdom of King Solomon—the calling of spirits and the command of hidden forces—have their modern equivalents in missiles, alliances, and ideologies. To illuminate the bored hours between crises, states will again invoke their ultimate powers, calling upon their own terrible names as if they were the modern echo of the mysterious Shem HaMephorash, the Ineffable Name. What appears to be the end of days may instead prove only the quiet interval before the next twilight struggle.

3

See Hulkower, I. (2025, June 26). Bombs Over Fordow: The Mountain And The Atom. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Bombs Over Fordow

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams—this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness—and madness of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be…

Read more

a year ago · 4 likes · Ilan Hulkower

; Hulkower, I. (2025, June 15). Zero Hour: The Strike on Iran And Its Aftermath. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

Zero Hour

Be silent, all flesh, before G-d! For [G-d] is roused from the holy habitation…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Ilan Hulkower

.

12

Hulkower, I. (2025, April 21). The Approaching Hour: Passing Thoughts on Iran and Its Nuclear Program. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

The Approaching Hour

Soon from the sea a noxious birth began…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · 9 comments · Ilan Hulkower

.

34

Ulrichsen, K.C. (2026, March 3). Iran betting Gulf pain will force Trump to seek a deal. Asia Times. https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/iran-betting-gulf-pain-will-force-trump-to-seek-a-deal/ ; Mansour, H.A. (2026, March 1). Iran’s Gulf Gambit: A Bet Against A Ticking Clock. The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

Iran's Gulf Gambit

It is perhaps a good day to remember that, despite the facial hair affinities, Iran is not Hamas. Its missiles are not home-made projectiles lobbed without guidance systems from the rubble of a collapsed UNRWA building. When an Iranian drone strikes the airport or the Fairmont in Dubai, it strikes them because someone in Tehran decided it should — a del…

Read more

6 months ago · 128 likes · 4 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

.

46

This view is shared by the Israeli ex-Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. General Yoav Gallant. (2026, March 2). Finish the Job. Defense Memo.

The Defense Memo

Finish the Job

What began on Saturday, February 28, was not a surprise. It was an inevitability…

Read more

6 months ago · 106 likes · 11 comments · General Yoav Gallant

.

54

The Saudi Pivot: The Logic and Structure of the New Middle Eastern Cold War. ( January 12, 2026). The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

The Saudi Pivot

In the mid-1960s, Malcolm Kerr published The Arab Cold War, a book that, at the time, imposed counterintuitive analytical discipline on a region habitually read through the narrow lens of a single totalizing conflict. Against the prevailing tendency to treat the Arab–Israeli conflict as the primary engine of Middle Eastern politics, Kerr reconstructed the region as a system in which Arab states competed—openly and ruthlessly—for primacy, legitimacy, and the authority to define the regional political agenda. The conflict with Israel was often mediated by, subordinated to, and at times an effect of, intra-Arab rivalry; it functioned as a source of symbolic capital and strategic leverage in contests among Nasserists, Ba’athists, monarchies, and revolutionary republics…

Read more

8 months ago · 224 likes · 30 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

.

56

Orton, K. (2026, March 8). Trump and Iran: What Are We Doing Here? It Can Always Get Worse.

It Can Always Get Worse

Trump and Iran: What Are We Doing Here?

Since the United States, supported by Israel, launched the military operation—or “limited combat operation” or intervention or war, as you prefer—against the Islamic Revolution that rules Iran on 28 February, the intended purpose has been rather difficult to pin down…

Read more

6 months ago · 3 likes · Kyle Orton

; See for example: Bose, N., Holland, S., & Layne, N. (2026, March 3). Trump, Rubio offer conflicting reasons for US entry into Iran war. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-says-us-has-knocked-out-many-iranian-naval-air-targets-2026-03-03/. Rubio later clarified his remarks, Gaskins, K. (2026, March 3). Rubio clarifies Israel remarks, says Trump made call to strike. CBS Austin. https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/rubio-clarifies-israel-remarks-says-trump-made-call-to-strike-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-secretary-state

59

See for instance a commentary written by a friend of mine. Today’s Iran Strike: A Trump Supporter’s Concern. (2026, February 28). Corned Beef Catholicism.

Corned Beef Catholicism

Today's Iran Strike: A Trump Supporter’s Concerns

For the second time in less than a year, the United States has struck Iran. Operation Epic Fury was launched early this morning. Unlike Midnight Hammer, the operation last June aimed at hitting Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Epic Fury has the stated objective of regime change…

Read more

6 months ago · 6 likes · 4 comments · Corned Beef Catholicism

.

63

Hulkower, I. (2025, November 30). An Unmooring? A Period of Liminality in Israeli-American Relations. Substack.

Ilan Hulkower

An Unmooring?

At last the key was mine to those vague visions…

Read more

9 months ago · 1 like · Ilan Hulkower

.

66

Fox, A. (2026, March 6). Winning the air war, losing Iran. Andrew Fox.

Andrew Fox

Winning the air war, losing Iran

The team responsible for cost-benefit strategic analysis at the Pentagon will be earning its pay this weekend. The Iranian regime is weakened, but its decentralised command structure is built to withstand both decapitation and attrition. Ultimately, the USA and Israel cannot defeat their forces through bombing alone, given 1.3 million men under arms…

Read more

6 months ago · 161 likes · 20 comments · Andrew Fox

.

Do not cast me off in old age; when my strength fails, do not forsake me!1

It is a time-honored adage to beware of an old man in a hurry. Those at the end of their careers, seized by an overriding sense of urgency, may set events in motion through reckless acts that yield dangerous results. The proverb is perhaps best suited to those who take up the political vocation near the end of their tenure—or when they are already at that point.

Abba Eban, among the founding patriarchs of the modern State of Israel, was politically a dove throughout his life. He felt deeply that the pursuit of peace ought to be the highest priority—indeed the ideal—of the state he helped to found and shape in its early years. Though his political career began to decline in 19742 and effectively ended in 1988,3 Eban continued to eloquently pontificate on political matters for the remainder of his days. A Churchillian in his mastery of oratory, he was a study in the power of persuasion and a leading figure in the dovish wing of Israel’s Old Labor Left. His death at the age of 87 in Tel Aviv in 20024 marked the passing of a generational torch.

Yet this master of grandiloquent rhetoric did not retreat into silent political retirement. He made his views known on a wide range of issues concerning the direction of Israeli politics. He campaigned, for instance, for electoral reform, citing what he saw as undue interference in Israeli elections by foreign citizens and the disproportionate influence of smaller parties.5

He also criticized Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir—a Likudnik and stalwart of the security-minded conservative hawks—for rejecting a 1989 American peace proposal because it included the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as part of the team Israel would have to talk to. Until 1993, Israel formally banned all contact with the organization.6 The aged Zionist statesman railed:

For the first time in its history, Israel is refusing dialogue. Not simply turning down proposals in a dialogue. Refusing to enter a dialogue and explore whether the peace prospect is available. At this time, Israel is putting its claim to 100 percent of the territory and 100 percent of the sovereignty of the whole of the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.7

He further warned that Shamir’s government “would be dominated by the forces of irredentism and proponents of violence.”8 Yet it was this same ostensibly inflexible government that would later—albeit reluctantly—enter into dialogue with Arab neighbors and even with Palestinians9 at the Madrid Conference of 1991.10

Following the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government in 1999, after the Wye River Memorandum outlined further phased Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and mechanisms for continued negotiations, Eban mused that Netanyahu’s political inconsistency was the key to his unraveling. The former foreign minister argued:

…He [Netanyahu] did such a revolution in his thinking because he enters the Knesset [Parliament] on the basis of a Greater Israel [i.e. a territorial scheme for all lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be under Israeli sovereignty] idea—in other words, do not give up anything to anybody—and at the end we find him shedding larger chunks of territory than anybody else ever conceived of doing and that, of course, does create a credibility gap, and that is what he is suffering from now.11

Eban endorsed the general scheme of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel and supported Netanyahu’s political opponent from the Left, Ehud Barak, describing him as a “lucid” man and a pragmatist committed to partition and peace.12 On the Arab side, Eban opined that “the terrorist movement has lost a great part of its appeal; even a man like Sheikh Yassin [founder of Hamas] no longer believes everything he says himself.”13

Ironically, the course of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has shown how the idealism within Eban clouded his judgment. Eban was not the architect of Israeli policy in these years so much as its most eloquent critic; his significance lies less in what he directed than in what his worldview assumed—and misjudged. Even his analysis of Netanyahu’s political evolution was, by its own terms, lacking. While in opposition, Netanyahu broke with Likud’s older and largely deadwood irredentist claim that Jordan was an integral part of Israel; under his leadership, Likud voted in favor of the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan.14

Netanyahu’s disagreement with Eban lay not in the desirability of peace but in its feasibility and sequencing. Where Eban viewed resolution of the Palestinian question as a prerequisite, Netanyahu was less doctrinaire. He sought instead to bypass the Palestinian issue and pursue normalization with Arab states15— a strategy that later bore fruit in the Abraham Accords. This did not mean that Netanyahu ignored or categorically rejected negotiations over Palestinian statehood during his earlier premierships, even if such openness narrowed significantly in the period following October 7, 2023.

Eban’s belief that the appeal of terrorism was waning was quickly disproven. In 2001, the Second Intifada unleashed a new wave of violence against Israeli civilians; the year of Eban’s death was itself marked by that bloodshed. The rise of Hamas as both a political force and governing authority in Gaza demonstrated that history was not dead, and that maximalist attitudes among Palestinians remained deeply entrenched. The repeated refusal of the Palestinian Authority—the body in which Eban placed his hopes for moderation—to settle the conflict on terms that would have resulted in Palestinian statehood in 2000, 2001, 2008, and 2020 shows that the day of the dove never arrived. That day proved illusory. Eban’s desire to rush toward a final settlement may, paradoxically, have undermined the prospects for a durable conclusion. Even Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister who initiated the Oslo process, harbored doubts about the sincerity of his Palestinian counterpart.16

This is not to suggest that Netanyahu is immune to a similar malady. He too is now an aging leader. Many analysts view the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacres as the fulcrum upon which the career of this consummate survivor of Israeli politics may finally turn. With elections slated for the coming year, Netanyahu’s audacious actions toward Iran and others are often interpreted as attempts to defy fate—or to cement his place in history before a political exit. Perhaps so. Yet many have written Netanyahu’s obituary before, only to watch him return from the dead. I do not wish to join such premature prognosticators. History has already rendered its judgment on Eban. On Netanyahu, it has not yet finished speaking.

GOD will claim Judah as a special portion in the Holy Land—and will choose Jerusalem once more.1

(And) for the miracles, and for the salvation, and for the mighty deeds, and for the victories, and for the battles which You performed for our forefathers in those days, at this time.2

The Revolt And Its Spark

“Whosoever is zealous of the law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him follow me!”3 the old priest thundered, his voice ringing through the square as he raised his bloodstained knife. Before him, the altar lay smashed and defiled, its stones darkened with blood—a broken monument to sacrilege and revolt. Beneath its shattered remains lay two bodies: one, a Seleucid official sent to enforce the king’s will; the other, a Jew who had willingly stepped forward to offer a foreign sacrifice.

The Seleucid official had come to the city of Modi’in to compel the inhabitants toward apostasy. Under the decrees of the ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, traditional Jewish religious practice had been outlawed. The local Jew, seeking favor or safety, had volunteered to perform a foreign sacrifice. It was the sight of this willing collaborator that stirred Mattathias—the elderly priest and descendant of Aaron—to violence.

With that act, Mattathias and his sons ignited a rebellion against the most powerful of the Greek successor states to Alexander’s empire. In the name of religious and national liberty, the Judean guerrillas would face off against the Greek phalanx, the tactic that conquered much of the known world. Mattathias and all but one of his sons would perish in the long contest of arms between the traditionalists and the Hellenizers. The sole remaining son, Simon, would claim the leadership of the once more sovereign commonwealth of the Jews. Simon would be assassinated alongside two of his sons by his son-in-law Ptolemy at a banquet in Jericho.4

Religious Commemoration

The story of this post-biblical5 revolt is the cornerstone of the Jewish holiday of Channukah—the festival of lights. This festival celebrates the moment when the Hasmoneans—the sons of Mattathias—liberated the defiled Temple in Jerusalem from Greek rule and found but one kosher cruse of oil to use. The oil was set to last one day but it managed to last eight days.6 By centering the festival on the miracle of the Temple oil, later religious tradition shifted attention away from Hasmonean military achievement and toward divine intervention.

For rabbinic authorities inherited from their Pharisee forbearers a mixed sentiment toward the Hasmoneans. The priestly family during the course of the righteous rebellion had claimed two mantles. One was the religious leadership over Israel and the other was the political leadership in Judea. The fusion of these two roles was an uneasy thing which was made all the uneasier when those who succeeded Simon7took on the title of king. This act was problematic given that according to Jewish tradition that only those of the tribe of Judah (i.e. those of the House of David) should be kings of Israel.8 The Hasmoneans, being priests, came from the tribe of Levi. In modern parlance, many people took issue with the legality of the concentration of power in one family’s hands.

The Hasmonean family also tended to side with Sadducees,9 the religious and political rivals of the Pharisees. Indeed, Sadducees would become the political faction most associated with the elite.10 The Pharisees by contrast were the party of people.11 It was prominent members of this faction that encouraged the development of mass education among the populace.12 Tensions between the two sects would at times boil into open civil war.13 The Roman general Pompey the Great elected in 63 BCE—after hearing from three different parties14—to intervene in the last of these civil wars by vassalizing Judea under the claimant he deemed the more pliant.15Thus ended the era of Jewish independence.

National Revival

When Theodor Herzl, the organizer behind modern political Zionism, first formulated his idea of recreating the Jewish commonwealth he invoked the memory of the Hasmoneans (Maccabees). “Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again,” he wrote in his book.16Herzl later remarked in an essay about the symbolism of the progressively lighting more candles on each night of the holiday. He wrote:

For our friend [who celebrated the holiday to reconnect to his Jewish roots], the occasion [lighting the menorah] became a parable for the awakening of a whole nation. First one candle — it is still dark and the solitary light looks gloomy. Then it finds a companion, then another, and yet another. The darkness must retreat. The young and the poor are the first to see the light. Then the others join in, all those who love justice, truth, liberty, progress, humanity and beauty. When all the candles are ablaze everyone must stop in amazement and rejoice at what has been wrought. And no office is more blessed than that of a servant of this light.17

Courage is contagious. One solitary man standing up for what is right gives courage to others to do the same. This is a deep observation of one of the rituals of the holiday.

Sovereignty Restored And A Debate

Herzl’s dream would become reality in 1948 with the independence of the modern-day State of Israel. In our own modern-day debate,18 there have been invectives deployed against the modern state. Some critics have gone so far as denying that Israel of today is not related to Israel of the Bible.19 While much of this ongoing debate within the American right has much to do with intra-Christian feuding about what should their relationship be to the Jewish state, the implications of this partly theological debate have ramifications on how Jews are seen. To deny any association or connection between the modern State of Israel and its ancient predecessors is rather insulting to Jews as it sounds like a denial of the continuity of their peoplehood.

Furthermore, it is not as if the division between the secular and the sacred are neatly divided among Jews. It is true that most of the founding Jewish movements of modern political Zionism were secular. It is not as if they were not moved or sought to entirely divorce themselves from the Bible. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, when he proclaimed the country’s independence also observed that the country was standing on the foundations laid out by the Hebrew prophets of old.20 Ben Gurion also laid claim in the same historic speech to the continuity in Jewish history from the Biblical era to the present day:

ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.21

Nor is the occasion of the founding of the state, as significant as it is, far from the only time the Jewish leader made reference to the Bible. Put simply Jewish history did not start in 1948.

Even the officials within the Catholic Church did not deny the connection between the Jews and the Holy Land when Theodor Herzl visited the Vatican to gauge their support for his enterprise. In fact, for many it was this very connection that—barring conversion—disinhibited them from giving their support. “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people,” the pope told Herzl.22 Herzl, for his part, had already reflected on the legacy of Jesus. When he was waiting to see the Vatican’s secretary of state, his gaze fell on a statue of crucified Jesus on the wall. He reflected on this sight:

The crucified figure, pitiful, suffering, the image of human misery, looked down from his bronze form upon the marble walls and the court life that was unrolling here in his name, and has been unrolling for many hundreds of years now. If he could have foreseen it all [the regal exhibition of wealth and power] when he cried from the cross, ‘Eli, Eli [My God, my God]! —would it have made dying easier or harder for him.23

Here, Herzl implicitly understands Jesus as a Jewish man, executed by Roman authority, whose suffering later became the foundation for a powerful religious and political institution. By framing Jesus within the context of Jewish experience, Herzl highlights a profound historical irony: Christianity, born from the persecution of a Jew, had achieved immense global influence, while the Jewish people themselves remained stateless and politically vulnerable. Herzl’s reflection is not triumphalist; rather, it is an exercise in historical caution, showing how movements born from suffering can be transformed—or even distorted—once they gain power and institutional authority.

The Hasmoneans, too, began as defenders of religious freedom and communal integrity. However, over time their movement hardened into a ruling dynasty, fusing sacred authority with political power in ways that provoked internal criticism and civil strife. Herzl’s meditation thus reads as a warning drawn from history: the achievement of sovereignty, however justified, carries the risk that the very ideals which animated the struggle may be distorted by success.

All of this does not preclude criticism of the modern State of Israel. The Hebrew Bible itself contains numerous critiques of the leaders of ancient Israel. Rabbinic authorities and the Pharisees likewise voiced concerns about the governance of the Hasmonean state. Being rooted in biblical tradition—or connected to it—does not make a state or its leaders immune to error. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah alike experienced their share of wicked rulers. Likewise, the restoration of Jewish political sovereignty in modern history does not place it beyond scrutiny. Yet, to deny any connection between the modern state and its historical predecessors is to dismiss the continuity of the Jewish people and, in effect, to insult their enduring identity.

A Moment of Disorientation

There is something dire about the present moment in Israel–American relations: an atmosphere of disorientation, of memories grown “bewilderingly cloudy” of identities once thought stable now blurred at the edges. For decades, the U.S.–Israel relationship rested on what seemed like fixed coordinates—strategic clarity,3 cultural affinity,4 bipartisan consensus. Yet today, that map feels unmoored. The attic window of American political identity, once bolted shut on this subject, now trembles with “a faint fumbling,” as if a new and unfamiliar interpretation is trying to force its way inside.

This is a liminal period—a threshold state in which the inherited meaning of the U.S.–Israel alliance is dissolving before a new meaning has cohered. In such moments of conceptual dislocation, narratives once dismissed as fringe can suddenly pose as insight; distortions can masquerade as revelation; and long-standing relationships can appear strange, even suspect, to those who once assumed them natural.

Signs of Disruption

When Tucker Carlson describes Zionism as tribalistic, supremacist, identitarian or when he labels Benjamin Netanyahu “the main enemy” of the West, he is not merely misinterpreting a political movement.5 He is staking a claim about what the West is, about what nationalism means, and about whom his audience should now view as friend or foe in a reordered moral universe. It is in this fog of unmooring that Tucker Carlson’s recent remarks must be understood—not as an isolated polemic, but as a symptom of a broader crisis in the American political imagination.

In this moral universe, Carlson’s justification for this extraordinary designation about Netanyahu and Zionism was his interpretation of an alleged statement Netanyahu made during the current Gaza war: that Israel was fighting people “because of how they were born,” implying an inherent, ontological evil in Palestinians. Carlson then contrasted this with his own stated belief that all human beings, though flawed, are redeemable because they bear the image of G-d. From this, he concluded that Netanyahu, and Zionism more broadly, advance a view of human nature akin to the ideology of Nazism.6

This characterization rests on a stacked series of distortions. Netanyahu has been explicit and consistent: Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the Palestinian people as such.7 His statements on the matter—whatever one thinks of his policies—affirm the opposite of what Carlson imputes to him. Carlson’s critique is therefore not a parsing of nuance but a construction of a strawman.

The accusation that Zionism is a form of racism, supremacism, or Nazism is equally unoriginal.8 It is a recycled Soviet canard, developed in coordination with Arab nationalist regimes, codified in the notorious and later-repealed UN resolution equating Zionism with racism.9 To deploy it now, in 2025, is to traffic in rhetoric crafted for geopolitical purposes during the Cold War, not in sober analysis of Jewish national self-determination.

For Carlson—a self-professed nationalist10—to denounce Zionism writ large, the Jewish national movement, as “tribalistic” is a remarkable inversion. It becomes even more difficult to take seriously when one recalls that he has platformed individuals such as Nick Fuentes, a self-declared admirer of Hitler, and others who argue that Nazi Germany was not as evil as history records.11 His expression of “not caring about Israel” is, in this light, hollow.12 If one believes the movement that created the State of Israel is itself anti-humanistic and morally equivalent to Nazism, then it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between the illegitimacy of Zionism and the legitimacy of the Israeli state that emerged from it. The posture of indifference collapses into implicit hostility.

Public Opinion and Generational Shifts

But Carlson’s turn against Zionism is not merely personal. It is emblematic of a broader shift within the American populist right. Figures who once styled themselves as stalwart defenders of Israel—Steve Bannon among them—have cooled or reversed their positions.13 The shift is not confined to pundits: polling shows an unmistakable generational reorientation. As Richard Baris has documented, sympathy for Israel has fallen to historic lows among registered voters. Only 29.1 percent express greater sympathy for Israel, compared with 21.4 percent for Palestinians. The largest group—29.9 percent—now chooses “neither.” Among young Republicans and those identifying with the “America First” movement, more now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israel.14

As Baris notes, “The only notable demographic that remains majority sympathetic to Israel is the Republican voter above 50 years old.” Only Republicans 65 and older show stable pro-Israel attitudes. Meanwhile, 38.4 percent of voters—a plurality—now believe Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, a view especially concentrated among younger voters.15

What is transpiring is a decisive shift in the gale of public favor—away from a strong U.S.–Israel alliance and toward a relationship that may become increasingly distant, even hostile. President Donald Trump may be a remnant of the older, instinctively friendly view toward Israel, but there is no assurance that his stance will be carried forward by his successor within the Republican Party. Put simply, even if a future Republican candidate were personally pro-Israel, the popular political landscape in which they would be operating may sharply restrict the extent of that support.

This is the crisis of the moment for those in the United States who remain deeply sympathetic to Israel: how to persuade the public, and particularly younger voters, of the merits of their case. The task is not merely to communicate but to confront a fundamentally altered generational terrain—one in which the long-standing foundations of American support for Israel no longer command the cultural or political dominance they once did.

The Rupture

Yet to make such persuasion effective, supporters of Israel must first come to terms with why this falling out has occurred. Baris, in his interview with Bannon, offered several clues. “It [the Gaza war] accelerated what should have taken eight years [according to the polling trend on Israel] to sixty days,” he observed. In his view, the shift was driven in part by “a bit of resentment” toward the Trump administration from voters who felt it was concentrating too heavily on foreign affairs at the expense of domestic concerns. The other factor, Baris argued, was the relentless flow of imagery from Gaza circulating on social media, which shaped perceptions far more rapidly and viscerally than traditional news ever could.16

I would maintain that the more immediate cause of the estrangement in public attitudes toward Israel lies in the events of June and the subsequent Israel–Iran war. At the onset of that conflict, I noted that:

[T]he American public has long tired of protracted wars in the Middle East. They justifiably criticize how fabricated stories about weapons of mass destruction led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq, and how repeated efforts at nation-building in foreign lands have often ended in failure and disillusionment.17

It did not help that Netanyahu—who had once been an advocate for U.S. intervention in Iraq—hinted that regime change in Iran might be an objective of the war.18 The rosy dazzlement of such interventions had long since worn off among the American public, and any suggestion of a new Middle Eastern entanglement threatened serious fracture within Trump’s political coalition.19

When the United States briefly but directly joined the bombing campaign, that tension was not fully consummated but heightened and exposed. It lent credibility to voices claiming that Israel was dragging America into a war with Iran—voices that could be heard not only among the commentariat but even in the Senate.20 All of this evoked Henry Kissinger’s alleged adage: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”21 If Americans came to believe that Israel, a friend, was pulling them toward conflict with Iran, an avowed enemy, a backlash was almost inevitable. The American intervention in the fighting served to many as confirmation of that fear, and favorable Republican views of Israel plunged as a result.

It was during this period that even Steve Bannon began adopting a more openly critical posture toward Netanyahu and the U.S.–Israel relationship.22 These anxieties of overcommitment were not limited to Israel’s critics. Within parts of the pro-Israel community, concern had already been mounting—even before the Iran–Israel war—that repeated invitations for America to involve itself in Israel’s internal political fights were setting the stage for disaster. The blurring of these lines was captured succinctly by President Biden’s ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, who remarked: “I really think that most Israelis do not want America to stay out of their business.” He said this in response to an Israeli minister who objected to precisely such intervention.23

For some, the situation called to mind a deeper historical memory: Rome, too, began as a distant friend to Judea before becoming a close, meddlesome, and ultimately hostile power. Those familiar with this history feared that excessive dependence on American involvement—military, political, or moral—might invite a similar trajectory.24

Navigating the Liminal Moment

The challenge now is clear: those who wish to sustain and strengthen the U.S.–Israel relationship must first confront the reality of this liminal moment. Public opinion is no longer shaped solely by traditional allies, established narratives, or historical sympathies. The younger generation, the media environment, and the ideological shifts within American politics have created a zeitgeist that is far less predictable and far more volatile than in previous decades.

To navigate this period effectively, advocates for Israel must move beyond platitudes and moral appeals rooted only in history or shared identity. They must engage directly with the questions and concerns driving estrangement: Why does Israel go to war? How are civilians affected? What are the stakes for the United States? And, critically, how can America’s support be framed not as blind allegiance but as a partnership rooted in shared strategic and ethical interests?

Communication alone will not suffice. Those seeking to build understanding must meet the public where it is, acknowledging mistakes, transparently explaining difficult decisions, and addressing both policy and perception. Above all, the emphasis must be placed on both the realistic basis and the values-based foundation of the U.S.–Israel relationship, demonstrating that support is rooted not only in shared strategic interests but also in shared ethical and humanistic principles. This requires a balance of humility and conviction, recognizing that previous assumptions underpinning support for Israel no longer hold unchallenged sway.

At times, even America has intervened in internal Israeli domestic politics. This also means that Israel’s critics must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: American intervention is not inherently beneficial for Israel. Military involvement, political entanglements, or diplomatic pressure can complicate Israel’s internal decision-making, escalate conflicts unnecessarily, and sometimes produce outcomes that run counter to Israel’s own strategic interests. Honest engagement with this reality is essential for any debate about the future of the U.S.–Israel relationship.

Toward a Resilient Relationship

Ultimately, the task is to transform this period of unmooring into one of renewal. Just as the Lovecraftian vision of the attic window suggests a fragile key to understanding the unknown, so too must advocates find the key to a new, sustainable understanding of Israel’s place in American consciousness. Only by confronting the causes of estrangement directly—and presenting a coherent, humanistic, and strategic case—can the alliance endure the shifting zeitgeist and reestablish a relationship that is not only resilient but genuinely shared.

Sometimes there is a phenomenon of which they say, “Look, this one is new!”—it occurred long since, in ages that went by before us. The earlier ones are not remembered; so too those that will occur later will no more be remembered than those that will occur at the very end.1

Into the cyclic gulf that girds the cosmos round,

Widening, deepening ever outward without bound…

Till the oft-rerisen bells from young Atlantis call;

And again the wizard-mortised tower upbuilds its wall

Above a re-beginning cycle, turret-crowned.2

The Road To The Present Moment

Homeric legend tells us that all of Hellas united for war when Helen was abducted by her lover Paris and taken to Troy. Unlike that ancient conflict, which was sparked by a tale of beauty and desire3, Israel’s war in Gaza was provoked by an act of unprecedented brutality on October 7, 2023_—a date now etched into Israeli and Jewish memory for the horrors inflicted on innocent civilians. There was no romance here—only ruin, and a solemn call to prevent such terror from returning in the future.

Here, it was Israel’s adversaries who were motivated not by love but by hate, when they rampaged through Israeli communities, killing, maiming, abducting, and raping innocents. In total, some 1,200 people were murdered, and around 250 were taken hostage.4 Hamas, the executor of the massacre, vowed to carry out more such operations until Israel was eradicated from the face of the earth.5 Illusions of security and deterrence, long held by Israel’s political and military establishment, went up in smoke.6 In their place came treble confusion, fear, and righteous fury.

It quickly became apparent that Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip would assume a size and intensity that would dwarf all previous engagements. No longer would Israel be content with the limited “mowing-the-grass” operations of yesteryear, which were designed to periodically degrade Hamas and reestablish deterrence.7 This time, Israel’s goals went further. Beyond the liberation of hostages, Yoav Gallant, then serving as Minister of Defense, declared before the Knesset on October 20^th that the war’s aims included the ouster of Hamas and the creation of a lasting “security regime” in the Gaza Strip.8 A post-Hamas governance plan was drafted by Israeli officials a few months later, envisioning an autonomous—yet demilitarized and deradicalized—Gaza.9 Israeli leaders also flirted with Trump’s surprise proposal in February 2025 that the U.S. take some kind of ownership over the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinians be moved out of the territory for the duration of the reconstruction. Under this proposal, Gaza would be open to Arab and Jew alike.10

To overthrow Hamas would require prodigious effort by Israel. Hamas, which governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, had ample time to shape their demesne to prevent easy and bloodless ouster. The terror organization had long employed a human shield strategy and since the 2014 war built and improved a whole elaborate series of underground tunnels for their fighters to operate in.11 In this sense, civilians became both shield and shroud—sacrificed to the optics of asymmetric war.

Hamas would respect no rule of war. “What Hamas did in weaponising Gazan civilian infrastructure has never been done before,” Andrew Fox, a British military observer of the conflict, wrote.12 Such cynical tactics by Hamas were borne out in reportage even among the Arab press who noted that the terror organization’s use of IEDs in particular—be they hidden on the road or in houses—was responsible for the majority of Israeli military causalities.13 Yet, despite the deliberate and systematic employment of morally dubious tactics by the terror group that placed its own population and civilian infrastructure in peril, comparatively little outcry was directed at Hamas by the press.14 Compounding these problems was that Gaza’s population was prevented by Hamas,15 Egypt, and her neighbors from fleeing an active war zone.

An Offer To End The War

All of this served to guarantee mass devastation and destruction in the Gaza Strip as a result of the intense fighting between the two sides.16 Now, after two years of fighting, the two sides have signed a deal that promises an end to the war.17 The deal that has signed is, at this point, not a comprehensive peace but phase one of a process that will hopefully culminate in a post-war environment. Phase one revolves around a trade of all remaining Israeli hostages for a set number of Palestinian prisoners and an Israeli pullback to agree upon lines within Gaza.18 President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, which the deal is based on, aims to foster a Gaza that is deradicalized and disarmed. Hamas will have no future in the governance of Gaza, which will be done along technocratic lines, according to this plan. The Israelis in return promise to withdraw and refrain from annexing the Gaza Strip.19

The overall vision of the plan aligns well with declared Israeli war goals. It is also a vision which, importantly for Arab and Islamic states, does not rule out the possibility of a Palestinian state. A final agreement over Gaza that details how the vision will be implemented has so far not been settled.20 Hamas, for instance, has so far refused to accept any plan where they are militarily disarmed as an organization.21 The demand for a demilitarized Gaza is a key Israeli demand and a red line.

Trump’s Post War Vision

Beyond the points outlined in the official peace-in-Gaza plan, Trump is seeking to revive the momentum behind the Abraham Accords. These Accords sought peace and normalization between the Jewish state and her Arab neighbors. What made this extraordinary coalition viable was the Arab ideological and political disarray in the Middle East coupled with Iranian ascendancy. Anti-Zionist animus gave way to power politics concerns and an emerging elite identity within the United Arab Emirates that sought an alternative to the failed movements of yesteryear.22 Prior to the October 7 massacre, Israel was in deep talks with the Saudis and Indonesians on expanding this Sunni moderate coalition.23 The war in Gaza, however, put that all on hold. Reinvigorating this noble coalition would, its advocates argue, expand the zone of active peace, promote stability, and contribute to a deradicalized Middle East.

Verily, in recent days, Syria—and even Lebanon—have signaled a tentative interest in reaching some form of understanding regarding the existence of the State of Israel—though both have made clear they do not intend to normalize relations.24 Meanwhile, Israel has emerged from the war with Hamas and Hezbollah victorious but militarily fatigued and diplomatically strained. The Assad regime in Syria lies in ruins, and Israel managed to deliver several direct blows to its regional rival, Iran, in a brief but pointed exchange.25 Paradoxically, the weakening of the pro-Iranian axis—long a shared concern for Israel and its Sunni neighbors—may now reduce the urgency for Arab states to strengthen ties with Israel. Compounding this is the reputational damage26 Israel has sustained during the Gaza conflict, which may make a balancing coalition27 seem less necessary—or less palatable—to its Arab counterparts.

Still, Trump remains an optimist, convinced that these obstacles can be overcome. Central to his vision is the belief that the open wound of Gaza must be closed in order to move on. This plan offers the praxis through which that healing might begin. Indeed, if Hamas and other such militant terror groups are discredited, disarmed, and disempowered, this would make such a process easier for both sides. Gaza thus has an opportunity to become a model rather than a reoccurring catastrophe.28

Prospective Pitfalls of the Plan

In the early days of the Gaza war, I examined three major proposals for governing the territory in a post-Hamas era: placing Gaza under the oversight of a multinational security force, restoring control to the Palestinian Authority (PA), or maintaining Israeli military occupation.29 Each came with significant drawbacks, as outlined in my earlier analysis. The Trump peace plan envisions “a temporary International Stabilisation Force” to help police Gaza and hold out the possibility of a reformed PA re-taking the reins.30

A History Of Failed Multinational Efforts

The history of multinational police or peacekeeping forces in the Israeli-Arab conflict has, for the most part, been underwhelming. As I noted in my earlier analysis:

The United Nations’ first peacekeeping mission was deployed in 1956 to the Sinai in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis to separate Egyptian and Israeli forces. In 1967, this force left the Sinai amid an Egyptian military buildup in the region despite [it] needing Israeli permission to do so and consequently allowed the Six Day War to happen. More recently the creation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in 1978 failed to quiet rocket fire and terrorist attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel. Similarly, an international force entered Lebanon in 1982 only to be withdrawn in 1984 after the security situation in the civil war torn country further deteriorated.

The international community has also spectacularly failed to achieve its mandate of non-state disarmament in Lebanon since then.

Beyond questions of effectiveness, there are also strategic risks to involving moderate Arab states in a Gaza policing mission. Public support across the Arab world for the Palestinian cause could constrain the willingness of these states to engage in the kinds of disarmament and deradicalization efforts necessary for long-term stability. Should the mission fail, and hostilities resume from Gaza toward Israeli communities, any subsequent Israeli military response could risk igniting a broader regional conflict.

Additionally, all of this presumes even that the Arab countries behind the Temporary International Stabilisation Force remain firmly united in the first place in the mission in question. As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour explained:

Most importantly, one of the central yet least acknowledged dynamics shaping regional politics over the past two decades is the inter-Gulf rivalry among the three most powerful Arab states today—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. This rivalry, though often obscured by shared rhetoric about Arab solidarity, intersects continuously with the broader competitions involving Turkey, Iran, and Israel. Any analysis of Gaza’s postwar trajectory that overlooks this triangular tension risks failing without warning… Despite all of their rhetoric whether about Arab solidarity, Islam or humanity, each of these states views Gaza not as a humanitarian cause or a field for collective Arab responsibility, but as an arena through which to project influence and check competitors. (Arabs are truly the last liberals.) Their cooperation will extend only as far as their rivalries allow—and those rivalries are precisely what will make any unified governance framework inherently unstable.31

From this perspective, geopolitical rivalries and identity politics may ultimately undermine—rather than strengthen—the intended mission of the policing force. Given these risks, my article proposed that moderate Sunni states might play a more constructive role by supporting educational reform in Gaza rather than participating directly in military policing.32

A Façade? A Reformed Palestinian Authority

The concept of a reformed Palestinian Authority that is truly committed to the path of moderation and to internal state building rather than to the conflict with Israel has been trotted out before. President George W. Bush in 2002 called for a new moderate leadership “not compromised by terror” to take over control of the political body and curb it of corruption and radicalism. He pledged that the US, the European Union, and Arab states would welcome and work with the Palestinian Authority to achieve these reforms.33 Bush gave direct aid to the PA to encourage such moderating measures.34

The United States even backed the candidacy of Salaam Fayyad to the premiership of the PA. President Mahmoud Abbas appointed Fayyad to the post in 2007 to carry out reforms. However, the reform program stalled and Fayyad resigned in 2013.35 Part of the problem was that the political party36 that Fayyad belonged to only secured less than 3 percent of votes for parliament in 2006.37 Fayyad in effect was carrying out a program that had no public support and dubious commitment from Abbas.38 Put simply, Fayyadism was a passing—and somewhat forced—phase that failed to structurally reform the PA.39

Endemic corruption40 and radicalism continued to run rampant within the Palestinian Authority. This political body, despite years of promised educational reform, has continued to publish and promote antisemitic textbooks that reject peace with Israel.41 Even in the aftermath of October 7^th, Palestinian officials and media aligned with Fatah profusely praised the massacre orchestrated by their rival Hamas. One Fatah official called it “a morning of victory, and morning of joy, a morning of pride” and said that all Palestinian people should participate in such an event.42 President Mahmoud Abbas appeared to defend the event on October 8^th when he proclaimed that the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves from Israeli aggression.43 These pro-violence voices have continued to be expressed within the ostensibly reforming Palestinian Authority to this day.44

All of this presumes that Fatah, the more secular alternative to Hamas that governs the West Bank, even manages to remain in power. The PA already has issues with reining in terrorist organizations that operate in the West Bank. The political body lost effective control of Samaria—the northern part of the West Bank—to Iranian-backed groups.45 President Abbas is at risk of becoming nothing more than the glorified mayor of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, and not much else.

A Waiting Game?

The Gaza war has left Hamas a battered organization. Large portions of its military and political leadership have been eliminated,46 much of its infrastructure destroyed,47 and its financial resources severely strained.48 Yet even in its weakened state, Hamas may recover—given time, support, and opportunity.

Before October 7, Hamas already enjoyed more popularity than Mahmoud Abbas in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.49 Since then, its support has only grown across those areas since then.50 If elections were held in the West Bank today, it is far from certain that Hamas wouldn’t emerge with the largest share of the vote.51In light of the Palestinian Authority’s fragility, it is not implausible that Hamas—or a similar radical group—could seize power in a coup, as it did in Gaza in 2007.52 Currently, the only significant barrier to such a takeover is limited security coordination between the PA and Israel. Handing Gaza over to Abbas, therefore, offers no real guarantee of preventing Hamas’s resurgence.

Hamas may simply be biding its time, betting that the decline of the Fatah-led PA will eventually allow it to claim leadership over the Palestinian people. Indeed, there was even before the war some talk of Hamas acting more in accordance with Hezbollah’s model—that is embedding itself as both a deep state and a state-within-a-state.53 “They’re prepared to let a cosmetic Palestinian administration run daily affairs, but Hamas will operate behind the scenes, like Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Dr. Michael Milshtein, head of the Moshe Dayan Forum at Tel Aviv University, warned about Hamas’s post-war strategy.54 Much then, hinges on the successful disarmament and political removal of Hamas. It is a presumption that, as Hussein Aboubakr Mansour argues, “may prove the most fragile foundation of all” given how arms ties into the terror organization’s identity.55

Unlocking The Key To Success: Enforcement

The success of the Trump peace proposal therefore hinges on two critical components: the disarmament of radical organizations and the dismantling of their ideological appeal. If the very terms behind the proposal are watered down, then this invites the prospect of recovery for both Hamas and its ideological kin. The Israelis, for their part, are unwilling to return to the status quo that preceded October 7. Here Mansour points out that the Israeli right must rethink their strategy and find ways “to extricate itself from the structural dynamics of the conflict altogether—to end, or at least structurally revise, the system that sustains the conflict as a spectacle.” Mansour rightly observes that starts not with ritualistic opposition to the illusion of Palestinian statehood—a risk he sees as never truly materializing in the foreseeable future—but through reckoning with “the first and most difficult point of the Trump plan: the deradicalization of Gaza.” He writes that:

It is placed first for a reason. It acknowledges what more people now recognize, however belatedly—that the ideological and educational environment of Palestinian society is the central and most difficult problem…Israelis—and Jews more broadly, together with their friends—must come to understand that this is now the core mission: to alter the incentive and ideological structure that produces generations willing to sacrifice themselves and their children for the cameras.56

For there to be peace then Gaza cannot be made to relapse into its old self and there must be a commitment to see that it does not.

This commitment must also be carried by the international community toward policing and rehabilitating Gaza as well. Indeed, beyond commitment, what is required is enforcement. If the disarmament is not adequately carried out by the international community and whatever body ends up governing Gaza then the cycle of violence will begin again. Otherwise, Gaza will become another Lebanon where Hezbollah’s military presence guarantees continued conflict with Israel. As Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria, put it when asked about how the Lebanese government was carrying out its disarmament program:

I would say, the Lebanese – and I don’t mean this is [in] a disrespectful way – all they [the government] do is talk. There has never been one act [to disarm Hezbollah]. We told them: ‘Do you want our help? We’ll give you our help.’ We gave them a playbook, they can’t get there…No [the Lebanese cannot enforce its own pledge to disarm Hezbollah]. Absolutely not. So we said: ‘Fine, we’re not going to execute, you know who is going to execute? Walk across that border, do you see where Jerusalem is? Jerusalem is going to take care of Hizbullah for you.’”57

For peace to hold, deradicalization and disarmament must commence and be thoroughly done. If the international community fails to carry through, the Israelis have already come to an understanding with the Americans that Jerusalem will ultimately enforce any violation that endangers their security.58

Conclusion: A Cycle To Repeat Or Broken?

We return at last to the epigraphs that opened this essay—one drawn from ancient scripture, the other from a poem of myth and magic. They remonstrate with us that history is not a straight line but a spiral; not progress, but recurrence; not wholly rational, but at times enchanted. “There is nothing new under the sun,” the venerable Ecclesiastes tells us59— as the old cycle begins anew. Like Atlantis, the past returns in disguise: different names, different banners, yet the same familiar ghosts.

October 7th marked such a return. If the Trojan War began with the abduction of a queen, Israel’s war began with the abduction—and slaughter—of civilians, not in the name of beauty, but in hatred’s name. Yet both events summoned nations to arms, and both shattered illusions—of safety, of stability, of civilization itself. What follows now—this deal, this pause—is poised between renewal and relapse. The tower rises again; whether it will endure is another question.

But the magical image of Atlantis reborn is not just a warning—it is a question. Can a cycle be broken? Can the incantation be reversed? The Trump peace plan, for all its practical challenges and geopolitical fragility, at least gestures toward a different future: one where Gaza is not a graveyard of dreams, but a ground for something new to grow.

Yet spells are undone not by hope alone, but by will—by enforcement, by ideological clarity, by the hard labor of deradicalization. Without these, the bells of Atlantis will toll again, and Gaza, like Troy, will be rebuilt only to burn once more. The road from myth to peace runs through a narrow gate. If this is not the end of a cycle, it may only be its latest re-beginning. If this is not a true peace, it is merely a pause before the next storm.

14

For details on this, see Fox, A. & Aizenberg, S. (2025). Hamas’s Human Shield Strategy in Gaza. The Henry Jackson Society. https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/HJS-Hamass-Human-Shield-Strategy-in-Gaza-Report-WEB.pdf; In Their Own Words: Hamas Turns Hospitals into Military Assets with NGO Compliance. (2025, September 10). NGO Monitor. https://ngo-monitor.org/reports/hamas-misuse-hospitals-docs/. On media manipulation, see Fox, A. (2025, October 9). Israel and the Genocide Libel. Quillette. https://quillette.com/2025/10/09/the-genocide-libel-besa-report-israel-gaza/; Fox, A. (2025, September 4). The lie that lingers. Fox On War, Substack.

Fox On War

The lie that lingers

In a matter of weeks, a series of dramatic revelations in the Gaza war should have turned the story on its head. They have not. From a famine that wasn’t, to a dead child who wasn’t dead, to a genocide declaration from an academic body that anyone could join for $30, the truth has repeatedly emerged only to find the false narrative firmly in place. This piece examines these extraordinary episodes and questions why none of them seems to shift the prevailing narrative. The answer lies in the nature of today’s information warfare: falsehoods move faster and hit harder, and by the time truth catches up, it is usually too late…

Read more

a year ago · 167 likes · 25 comments · Andrew Fox

; Fox, A. & Glezer, T. (2025). Misinformation Strategy and Media Bias in the Gaza War. Middle East Quarterly, 32(2). https://www.meforum.org/meq/misinformation-strategy-and-media-bias-in-the-gaza-war.

The arid desert shall be glad,
The wilderness shall rejoice
And shall blossom like a rose

It shall blossom abundantly,
It shall also exult and shout.
It shall receive the glory of Lebanon.1

I dream of Lebanon by an azure sea;
Wave-kissed shores, and rocky glades;
Snowcaps on mountains, glistening gorgeously;
O sweet-scented pines’ serenades.2

Proud Lebanon has been reduced and humbled. Once radiant in the Tyrian purple glow of its post-independence promise, it has long existed in a fallen state. That youthful afterglow has darkened to a scarlet hue, stained by the blood of civil war and political decay. Since the late 1960s, the country has been fractured—its southern region existing in a state of semi-independence, governed by forces outside the central authority. These internal divisions have made Lebanon a magnet for foreign intervention, each fragment pulling in the interests of regional and global powers.3

The Present Moment

Transitory moments in which she seemed poised to recapture her former promise have flickered by—but each has proven fleeting. Decades of turmoil and disappointment have left lamentable Lebanon not only diminished, but a shadow of the proud nation she once aspired to be. Now, in the aftermath of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, she is provided with a period of opportunity to restore a greater measure of control in the long-neglected south.

The war left Hezbollah severely damaged. According to the Alma Research and Education Center, 15 percent of its operatives were casualties of the brief conflict and the senior leadership of the terrorist organization was seriously eroded. Its Radwan Unit, the sword of Hezbollah, which was tasked with invading the Galilee, was for the time being rendered out of commission.4

The Pledge And Plan

The government under its new president Joseph Aoun has pledged to disarm Hezbollah, the source of much vexation.5 Beirut has approved a plan to remove all non-governmental weapons from the south of the Litani River by the end of the year. However, various governmental officials walked out in protest over the decision to disarm. Hezbollah said that they will “treat this decision as if it does not exist.”6

One version of the disarmament plan called for Israeli withdrawal from five strategic positions in Lebanon in exchange. This withdrawal was set to occur from all positions before the Lebanese army disarmed Hezbollah’s heavy weaponry.7 Israel, for its part, recognized the importance of this development and announced that if the Lebanese army actually carried out “the necessary steps to implement the disarmament of Hezbollah” then they would reciprocate through “a phrased reduction of IDF presence” in southern Lebanon.8

The talks have not remained entirely theoretical either. Back in early August, the Lebanese army suffered six fatalities when munitions at a Hezbollah arms depot detonated.9 The army also began disarming various Palestinian groups in refugee camps in the same area.10

Double Games

However, the effectiveness of these measures and the seriousness of the Lebanese government have been called into question. Critics point out that it is not entirely clear what disarmament means and how far the government is prepared to go to achieve it. Indeed, some critics go so far as to suggest much of the disarmament debate is smoke and mirrors:

So far, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have refrained from entering these areas in order to disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In addition, although the LAF reported last March that it had located approximately 500 weapons depots in southern Lebanon, very little evidence has been published in the media regarding the weapons found. It is unclear what weaponry was involved, and it appears that much of it is non-operational.11

A similar symbolic over substance charade was observed amid the fanfare of the army’s progress in disarming various Palestinian factions.12

The Alma Center also found evidence that suggested that elements within the Lebanese army were cooperating with Hezbollah to conceal weaponry.13 Hezbollah is not merely a state-within-a-state; it also functions as a deep state embedded within Lebanon’s institutions. It exists both within and alongside the Lebanese state. Therefore, any military disarmament that fails to address the legal, social, and economic structures sustaining Hezbollah’s shadow power structure will remain fundamentally incomplete.14

This would, however, involve a sweeping wave of reformation and disentanglement of state institutions from non-state actors. The widespread infiltration of institutions of the Lebanese such as the military’s intelligence apparatus by Hezbollah sympathizers and agents presents a formidable challenge.15 Hezbollah may be weakened but it is neither dead nor diaphanous. Prior to the war with Israel, Hezbollah was considered to be better armed than the Lebanese state.16 The war, though disastrous for the organization, is unlikely to have changed that balance.

Lebanon has been on this road many a time before. Pledges and plans to disarm the vestigial relics of its civil war era militias have been abundant. Hezbollah traditionally evaded this scrutiny. The 1989 Taif Agreement that ended the 15-year-long conflagration called for the Lebanese army to have full control over Lebanese territory and for the dismantling of “all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.”17 The same agreement also called for the liberation of southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation as part of its process of national re-coalescence.18

Hezbollah used the latter clause to exceptionally nullify calls for its own disarmament.19 In effect, they argued that their militia uniquely served a national purpose against a common enemy. The Israeli total withdrawal from southern Lebanon unsurprisingly revealed the hollowness of Hezbollah’s tepid attempt at a legal argument. The organization refused to disarm in the aftermath and shifted the goal to the liberation of Sheeba Farms20 from Israeli control.21 This too though was a hollow argument given that the organization’s ideological raison d’être from its inception was the utter elimination of Israel.22 The organization has never wavered from that belief.23 Still during this time, the Lebanese state failed to disarm Hezbollah.

The United Nations Security Council issued a resolution in 2004 reiterating a call for “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” within the country.24 The war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 only heightened international calls for a state monopoly of violence in Lebanon. The United Nations Security Council’s 1701 resolution denounced Hezbollah by name in its call for the “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords…that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon…other than that of the Lebanese State.”25

The international resolution tasked the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese government with carrying out this program. Both utterly failed to follow through. The Lebanese state, despite its promises, effectively abandoned any element of this program in 2008 after Hezbollah organized a military takeover of Beirut.26

The resolution’s status as a dead letter was evident to all. Indeed, a 2010 U.S. Senate hearing on Lebanon revealed the extent to which these resolutions and promises had become meaningless:

Just 4 years after its 34-day war with Israel, Hezbollah’s military capabilities today are more robust than ever. With the help of Iran and Syria, its arsenal has become more sophisticated and more lethal. During the 2006 conflict, Hezbollah fired approximately 4,000 rockets--4,000 rockets--into Israel, killing 44 Israeli citizens. Furthermore, it retains military superiority to Lebanon's armed forces. In April, Defense Secretary Gates said Hezbollah had, and I quote, “far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.”27

UNIFIL’s presence in southern Lebanon was no deterrent to Hezbollah activity. Quite the contrary, the latest Israeli operation in Lebanon showed that many Hezbollah positions were in close proximity to UNIFIL bases.28

A Path Forward

Jerusalem has reason to be skeptical of Lebanon’s renewed declarations to disarm Hezbollah. Decades of broken promises have eroded trust. While Israel may hope to see Beirut assert full control over its borders and bullets, it also knows that Lebanon’s political leadership remains fickle, fractured, and often captive to sectarian calculations. A premature withdrawal—absent real enforcement—risks repeating the cycles of backsliding witnessed in 2000 and 2006. In this view, continued external pressure remains the surest path toward realizing the long-delayed goal of a sovereign, unified Lebanese state.

As I have argued before, Lebanon must ultimately decide what kind of nation it wishes to be.29 To allow Hezbollah to operate as it has in the past is to provide provender for future war and bloodshed. If Lebanon is to escape the recurring tragedies of its history, it must not only reflect on its mistakes—it must at last move to rectify them.

We labour by our lives for bread, we are like broken shards, like dry grass, and like a withered flower; like a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud,…like a fleeting dream. But You are the king who lives eternal.2

It is said that King Solomon once tasked one of his ministers with finding a magical ring—one that would uplift a man in sorrow, yet temper him in joy. The task seemed impossible, as no such ring existed. The desperate minister searched for months in vain until he stumbled upon an impoverished jeweler. When asked about the ring, the jeweler produced a simple gold band, engraved it, and handed it to the minister.

The minister presented the artifact to Solomon, where it had its desired effect: humbling a man in the moment of rapturous triumph and raising that same man when he was depressed. The engraving on the ring consisted of three Hebrew letters: gimel, zayin, yud—an abbreviation of the phrase Gam zeh ya'avor, meaning: This too shall pass.3

Spring flourishes into summer; summer descends into fall, which in turn deadens into winter. Winter, for its part, thaws into spring. The cycle of time spins on and on, with the flow of events ever progressing. Time is, as scientists can best determine, a relative phenomenon—the rate of which depends on one’s frame of reference.4Indeed, time can be both balm and bitterness. Change is certain, and at different times both desired and dreaded. The silent celerity of time, through its advances and retreats, has often stirred many from their sonorous slumber into bursts of creative action. Thus is the human condition marked.

There have been changes in my life that should be brought to your attention. On the whole, these have been good ones. Yet one change, set to occur this Tuesday, marks a new development in my professional career. It also means that I anticipate having much less time to write and publish material on this Substack.

I will have to feel my way through this change, testing what is realistic in terms of future writing and publication. I ask for your patience as I step into this new season, uncertain yet hopeful that time will once again offer moments to write, reflect, and share.

—

I was interviewed today by David Freiheit on VivaBarnes.Locals.com regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. You can find the interview through the link below—it begins around the 50-minute mark. Please pardon my audio.

https://rumble.com/v6yd6u2-trump-changing-tune-on-operation-warp-speed-cbc-promoting-propaganda-shiloh.html

Lying speech is an abomination to the Lord,/But those who act faithfully please Him.1

My Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise.2

The Parable

When G-d sought to first create mankind—so the story goes—there was an uproar in Heaven. The angels divided themselves into two clear camps and each made their opinion known to the Almighty. One group—the angel of Loving Kindness and the angel of Justice—firmly remonstrated in favor of humanity. Mankind would, they argued, demonstrate their virtue. Yet, the angels of Truth and Peace vigorously protested and argued against such a creation. Mankind would, these two said, seek falsehood and war. G-d resolved the dispute by casting Truth from Heaven and hurling it to the ground.3 Thus, despite the critics, humanity was created.

Two Readings of Truth's Fall

Yet, what should one make of the story? Why was Truth but not Peace cast to the ground? Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk said that the source of many a strife is a narrow vision of the truth. In other words, people tend to fight over their version of the truth. Hence, once truth was out of the way, peace could be content.4

While this reading is insightful, another perspective offers a different emphasis. Criticism finds its noblest form when it builds rather than forbids—when it seeks not to erase, but to refine. Yes, mankind may be prone to violent strife and falsehood can certainly sprout in abundance. Yet, this is not the only thing that humanity is capable of. Free will is imparted to us and thus there is no predestined decree that such malevolent forces must prevail against our better judgement. For in the creation of mankind, G-d—according to this story—does not destroy Truth but casts it from Heaven to dwell among mankind.

Truth, therefore, is not truly sacrificed. It may not be elevated but it is still relevant. One could say that Truth became grounded in the course of the narrative and thus accessible to all. The righteous critic then must be grounded in truth. Truth alone, however, does not guarantee that this critic will prevail in their argument—for truth must be tempered by humility, empathy, and a willingness to build, not only to judge.

Modern Parallels

This ancient dispute over truth’s place is not merely theological—it echoes in our modern virulent debates. Many argue for instance that the corporate press, far from being a beacon of truth and the guardian of neutrality, operate according to malevolent and perverse agendas of their own.5 Others argue that alternative press also has their own designs and is thus not colored by the truth.6

This issue of the credibility of views came out in a debate between Douglas Murray, a British author and political commentator, and Dave Smith, an American comedian and political commentator, on the Joe Rogan Experience back in April.7 Here Douglas Murray challenged Dave Smith’s authority to speak on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pointing out that Smith had never visited Gaza or Israel.8 Yet this argument backfired. In an age of media saturation and global connectivity, knowledge is not the sole domain of those with firsthand access.9 The audience—skeptical of gatekeeping—found Murray’s appeal to authority unconvincing.

This incident illustrates how the gatekeepers must do more than discredit—they must offer a more compelling alternative than their critics. At the same time, Murray rightly observed that many critics, when pressed, retreat from direct accusation to the safer ground of questioning, thereby sidestepping accountability.10 Yet in making this point, Murray may have inadvertently surfaced a deeper and more unsettling dilemma: who has the authority to speak truth, and on what grounds?

The Role of the Critic

The value of a gatebreaker lies in their ability to offer a more accurate, fair, and truthful account than the gatekeeper. Put simply, they must be better than the gatekeeper. After all, the prophet is only respected if he speaks truth to power—he is not regarded as such if what he speaks falls short of that. To be truly valid, the superior critic must not only identify the creator's shortcomings but also offer deeper insight and a more compelling vision for what could be done instead. In this sense, such criticism only holds weight when it sees further than the work it judges.

Case Studies

A critic, for instance, must not distort the very sources they cite to support their case. When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their book critical of what they termed “the Israel lobby”11 and the State of Israel, they drew upon the work of preeminent Israeli historian Benny Morris to bolster their claims. Yet within their work lay an irreconcilable dissimilitude between the arguments they advanced and the original sources they claimed to cite. Indeed, the very Morris they invoked later charged that they had twisted and omitted relevant material from his research to such a degree that it was no longer recognizable.

“[T]heir work is a travesty of the history that I have studied and written for the past two decades. Their work is riddled with shoddiness and defiled by mendacity,” Morris scathingly wrote in an article published in The New Republic. In that piece, he meticulously detailed what Mearsheimer and Walt had materially misrepresented, what they had conveniently omitted, and how they had relegated key information to the fine print of footnotes.12 While their book sparked substantial debate and drew attention to the role of lobbying in foreign policy, Morris’s rebuttal underscores the dangers of selective citation in the service of a predetermined narrative.13

A critic’s incuriosity can also lead them astray. When Tucker Carlson interviewed a Palestinian Christian pastor Munther Isaac, this incuriosity became evident. “They [the Christians in the Gaza Strip] are begging us can you get us out. Of course, we are helpless here,” the pastor said, referring to the dire wartime conditions in Gaza. Yet according to Luke Moon, Executive Director of the Philos Project, efforts to evacuate Christians—even prior to the war—had already been made.14 The aim of this initiative was to help those who wished to leave relocate to the West Bank.

Yet according to Moon, one of the individuals who actively obstructed the project was none other than Munther Isaac himself. “It also did not help that…Munther and his crew…did not want the Gazans—the Christians—to move to the West Bank and they actually in several instances thwarted our efforts and spread distrust about our intent,” Moon recalled.15

Similarly, while Isaac appeared to lament the October 7th attacks in English during his interview with Carlson,16 his remarks in Arabic the following day, on October 8, 2023, struck a markedly different tone. In that address, the pastor seemed to downplay the violence and frame the Hamas-led invasion as a response to systemic oppression. He reportedly said:

Frankly, anyone following the events was not surprised by what happened yesterday… One of the scenes that left an impression on my mind yesterday, and there are many scenes, is the scene of the Israeli youth who were celebrating a concert in the open air [the Nova music festival] just outside the borders of Gaza, and how they escaped. What a great contradiction, between the besieged poor on the one hand, and the wealthy people celebrating as if there was nothing behind the wall. Gaza exposes the hypocrisy of the world.17

That Carlson offered no pushback regarding this apparent code-switching—depending on Isaac’s audience—raises serious questions. It suggests either that Carlson was unaware of the October 8 remarks, or that he chose to ignore them to preserve a particular narrative or optic.

Truth is seldom simple. Yet in acknowledging the complexity of life and history, a more nuanced and accurate understanding can begin to emerge. If Luke Moon’s account is accurate, however, Pastor Isaac appears less committed to that complexity—and less dedicated to truth—than he presents himself to be. Moon recounts an incident in which Isaac allegedly denied that Jews are indigenous to the Holy Land, repeatedly claiming in conversation with another pastor that Jews are simply “from Europe.”18

This assertion becomes especially problematic when Isaac simultaneously identifies as part of “the longest and oldest Christian community in the world, the first Christian community in the world.”19 For it is a matter of historical fact that the earliest Christians were Jews living in the Holy Land.20 The contradiction thus not only undermines historical accuracy but also weakens the moral authority of any critique that rests on selective memory or exclusionary narratives.

The pastor’s rhetoric reflects a broader pattern within the Palestinian nationalist movement. At times, Jesus has been anachronistically recast as a Palestinian and employed as a symbolic rallying figure.21 Yet curiously, this revisionist impulse never seems to extend to Judas.

Such gross distortions—whether through selective memory, ideological convenience, or willful omission—are not simply momentary lapses in judgment; they represent a deeper betrayal of the critic’s duty. When criticism is wielded simply as a weapon rather than a tool for understanding, it ceases to be anchored in truth and begins to serve factional ends. If truth is to remain more than a rhetorical device, then those who invoke it must treat it with reverence and rigor. It is in this spirit that true criticism must be reclaimed—not as an act of demolition, but as an act of moral labor.

One cannot err in invoking Samuel Johnson, the preeminent 18th-century English writer, who described the genealogy of criticism as an offspring “of Labour and of Truth.” Pure criticism, he wrote, is “committed to the care of Justice.”22 In the end, truth’s descent from Heaven may not just have been a fall but a challenge—a call for critics and creators alike to engage with it humbly, honestly, and with a responsibility to build, not merely to break.

5

For a variety of criticism across the spectrum, see Friedman, M. (2014, August 25). An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth. Tablet. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guide; Handel, P. (2024, January 4). These Are the Essential Stories Corporate Media Refused to Cover in 2023. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/these-are-the-essential-stories-corporate-media-refused-to-cover-in-2023/; Loury, G. (2024, April 8). Michael Shellenberger—The Censorship-Industrial Complex. The Glenn Show.

Glenn Loury

Michael Shellenberger – The Censorship-Industrial Complex

Listen now

2 years ago · 69 likes · 38 comments · Glenn Loury

; Welcome to the Free Press. (2022) The Free Press.

The Free Press

Welcome to The Free Press

Each one of us has a tiny computer in our pocket with, basically, the sum total of human knowledge. We have never had access to more information, or more ways to share it…

Read more

4 years ago · 511 likes · 369 comments · The Free Press

. Nor is this issue necessarily even a new one. See Vanderwicken, P. (1995), Why The News Is Not The Truth. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1995/05/why-the-news-is-not-the-truth.

10

Allosso, D. (2025, April 16). Murray v Smith: Assessing the Debate. MakingHistory, Substack.

MakingHistory

Murray v. Smith

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Dan Allosso

.

21

See Mansour, H.A. (2024, April 2). The Different Origins of the Palestinian Jesus. The Abrahamic Metacritique, Substack.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

The Different Origins Of the Palestinian Jesus

“On the same day, I went to the late martyr, Abu Jihad, and said to him, “You are now being put up on the cross [By Israel].” This was in the idiom that we used. But he didn’t believe me, and a month later, he was assassinated…

Read more

2 years ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

.

Alas! Lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among nations
is become like a widow; the princess among states is become a thrall.1

Alas, she has become a whore, /The faithful city/That was filled with justice.2

Remember the exhausted [nation] that won [Your favor], and return her to Your soil.3

The hoary prophet protested and bitterly swayed, for his pronouncements of doom came true in his own day. Nobles averted their eyes, preferring the comfort of false prophets’ hopeful lies. But it was too late. The Babylonian conqueror swept through the land, draining life with merciless hand. Fair Zion was friendless and faced the great power’s all-destructive wrath alone. The Jewish king Zedekiah was blinded after witnessing the slaughter of his sons, the cherished Temple went up in flames. A literal doomsday came for the Kingdom of Judah and her inhabitants. The prophet Jeremiah was thus left to lament the ruinations of a city, a kingdom, and a people.

The Babylonian Destruction

The suicidal revolt against the Babylonians was a last grasp by the Jewish kingdom for freedom. This was not the first time they defied the colossus of Babylon. In an earlier bid for independence, the kingdom had placed its trust in the broken reed of Egypt. But Egypt—Babylon's longtime rival—had already been dealt a crushing blow. In 605 BCE, at the Battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar II's forces4 decisively defeated the combined armies of Egypt and its Assyrian allies, shattering for Jeremiah any illusion that Pharaoh could save Judah from Babylonian wrath. Long gone were the days when the children of Israel could muster up a grand network of local alliances to stymie would-be hegemons like they did at Qarqar against the Assyrians in 853 BCE.5 Thereafter, Judah served as a precariously situated client state between the two great powers.6

Judah’s tribute was given to the power she thought was the stronger. The resurgence of Egypt in 601 BCE led King Jehoiakim to switch sides and revolt against Babylonia. Yet, Babylon soon reestablished its hegemony over the Levant and Nebuchadnezzar would dethrone Jehoiakim’s son and appoint Zedekiah as king of Judah. However, the puppet king Zedekiah, swayed by the honeyed promises of Egypt, proved disloyal and revolted. This revolt proved fatal and traumatically ushered in the doomsday marked by the loss of the First Temple, Jewish sovereignty, and a 70-year exile in 586 BCE.7 The date on the Jewish calendar of this day of infamy was Tisha B’Av—the Ninth of Av. It was to remain a day ushering many a doomsday for the Jews.8

Roman Ruin

It was the same day in a different year—70 CE—when the Romans would burn down the Second Temple in a similarly doomed rebellion against foreign authority. The Temples were more than just sacred buildings but they were the epicenter of a whole system of rituals and belief that were now cut off.9 In many ways, the Jewish people and faith have still not recuperated from the loss even today. Jewish historic memory would assign the causes of these immense losses in 586 BCE and in 70 CE as stemming from either people committing idolatry in the case of former or baseless hatred of their fellow in the case of the latter.10

Indeed, the inability of the rebel factions to get along with each other in Jerusalem even as the Romans began their counteroffensive contributed to the weakening of the city’s ability to withstand a long siege. “O m[o]st wretched city, what misery so great as this didst thou suffer from the Romans, when they came to purify thee from thy intestine hatred,” the former rebel and Roman Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the violent factionalism in the unhappy capital.11 Though the Great Revolt against Rome was mercilessly crushed,12 the cause of Jewish independence long endured that rebellion. Yet, the defeat of a separate cast of Jewish rebels by Rome at their last stand at Beiter in 135 CE13 is said to have occurred on the same unlucky day.14

The Spanish Decree

The Spanish King Ferdinand issued the infamous Alhambra Decree that set Tisha B’Av in 1492 as the date the Jews had to leave the country.15 Some 40,000 to over 150,000 Jews were expelled under this edict.16 The only alternative to this fate was conversion to Catholicism.17 Yet, those who chose the latter option were themselves not spared from being hated upon. The concept of limpieza de sangre (cleanliness of blood) arose to distinguish between the purity of the Old Christian families and the newer converts.18 This act signaled the futility of assimilationists and forecasted that Jews would be regarded as foreigners even in countries they had long inhabited and helped to build.19 Some historians like Benzion Netanyahu regarded much of the Spanish Inquisition as an early harbinger of the shifting nature of antisemitism from a religious based hatred to a racial one.20

Modern Echoes

In more recent history, the association of Tisha B’Av with devastation continued. The outbreak of World War One, which itself resulted in the deaths of 16.5 million people worldwide,21 occurred on the day of infamy.22 The great war led not only to the mass violence against Jews in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War,23 but it paved the path an even more destructive conflict the Second World War. In this way, it helped set the stage for the Holocaust. Indeed, even a central aspect of the Holocaust—Heinrich Himmler’s order to mass murder the Jewish people—may have coincided with the Tisha B’Av of 1941.24

The 2005 withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip and the uprooting of Jewish communities there were initially slated to occur during Tisha B’Av. Jewish life thereafter ceased in the Gaza Strip. Even the dead were transported from their resting place to Israel.25 The government, realizing the significance of the date these acts were set to occur delayed their implementation until after the day had passed.26 The lack of peace in return for the traumatic cession of land still shapes how many Israelis view the event up to the current war in Gaza.27

Enduring Despair And Hope

When Benjamin Netanyahu appeals to the Israeli public to avoid the calamities of doomsday past,28 he taps into a reservoir of living memory—shared traumas that continue to shape the national psyche. For many, the disasters of Jewish history were not inevitable but the tragic outcomes of delayed action or internal division. The refrain “if only we had been more united” echoes across generations. And yet, amid the dirge and the bitter fruits of frustration, these memories also carry a faint glimmer of hope: that by remembering, we might avoid repeating; that unity, once elusive, might still be forged in time to prevent the next catastrophe.

While the Book of Lamentations ends with the haunting line, “For truly You have rejected us, bitterly raged against us,”29 Jewish tradition does not let despair have the final word. Instead, the reading on Tisha B’Av concludes with the penultimate verse, repeated aloud: “Take us back, O LORD, to Yourself, / And let us come back;/ Renew our days as of old!”30 Even in the darkest moments, the Jewish tradition clings to the possibility of renewal. The exhausted may yet find rest; the shattered may be restored. For the future is not fixed—it remains malleable, and the life we mourn may yet be reborn. The city—once desolate from destruction—will, G-d willing, be rebuilt and flourish once again.

“A city for sale, and doomed to speedy destruction if it finds a purchaser.”1

With these memorable words—attributed by the Roman historian Sallust to the Numidian king Jugurtha—the depth of bribery and corruption in late Republican Rome is laid bare. The phrase serves as a quintessential commentary on the self-destructive nature of moral, economic, and political decadence. The sale represents betrayal on multiple levels: of civic duty, republican ideals, and Rome’s own sense of dignity. That this indictment comes from Jugurtha, a foreign adversary, only sharpens the insult—exposing not just the internal decay but the humiliating fact that even outsiders could see it clearly. That Jugurtha not only observed but actively participated in Rome’s corruption underscores its national security implications: when the Republic's moral defenses failed, its political ones soon followed. Those who follow in such sordid footsteps risk surrendering the very mastery of their national destiny.

This essay is not a tale about ancient Rome. Nor is it a mere diatribe against decadence. It is a warning about the hazards of Qatari influence in American politics and education—a modern echo of an old danger: the sale of civic virtue to foreign interests, and the corrosion that follows. To be sure, Qatar is not alone in its malign activities, but it is the largest donor of unreported funds to American academia.2 Qatar also happens to be a longtime supporter of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatari promotion of these malevolent forces abroad began with the ascension to power of Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani in a bloodless coup in 1995. The small but wealthy emirate—independent from Great Britain since 1971—wished to be a bigger player in the region and the world.3 They and other similarly-minded states therefore saw an opportunity in the open American academic, media, and political landscape to make their mark.

The Fruits Of Foreign Funding In Academia

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) conducted a groundbreaking study, The Corruption of the American Mind, which examines undisclosed foreign funding in American academia.4 Their research found an inverse correlation between the acceptance of such funds and the state of free speech on campuses. According to the report, “Our findings showed that campaigns targeting academic scholars are correlated with the distribution of undocumented funds by campus.”5 Both right- and left-wing scholars have been targeted by these censorious campaigns. Academic freedom—and freedom of conscience, a cornerstone of American liberty—has become a casualty.

Moreover, as noted by the study, the consequences extend beyond these victims. ISGAP observed an association between levels of campus antisemitism and levels of undocumented money—especially from Middle Eastern and authoritarian states. ISGAP also noted:

A positive directional association between campus antisemitic incidents and antisemitic incidents on the county level; and…a higher temporal correlation between use of the #Israeliapartheid hashtag on Twitter and antisemitic incidents at education institutions that received undocumented funding than those institutions that did not.6

Agendas tend to come with lavish funding. In this respect, the broader correlation between foreign influence and the distortion of American academic discourse may be revealing.

Take for instance, the creation of the Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) in 1975, which was established due to heavy patronage from Arab states.7 CCAS was described by As’ad AbuKhalil, a student and friend of one of its directors, as “a radical alternative to Middle East studies in the U.S.” that pushed back against the old “orientalism” bias. The very creation of CCAS was, AbuKhalil continued, unique because its promotion of pan-Arabism, the ideology that was then prevalent— though declining in the Arab world. The center was an outpost of this ideological view, according to AbuKhalil, even “when the U.S. (government, media and academia) fought all manifestations of Arab nationalism and refused to accept the legitimacy of the Arab nationalist project, or even its political existence.”8

Anti-Zionism additionally became an axiomatic part of their ideological dogma—one that was actively encouraged, if not transplanted, into American academic institutions.9 One chair of the CCAS, Hisham Sharabi, came to the United States from Lebanon in 1947 for his graduate studies. He returned to Lebanon a year later and became not only a member of the fascistic Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) but an assistant of its leader, Anton Saadah.10 Sharabi was forced to flee to Jordan following a government crackdown on the party in 1949 after an attempted coup. He then found his way back to the United States to complete his studies in 1953. While in America, he continued his affiliation with the SSNP until 1955.

Afterwards, Sharabi turned his attention to the Palestinian cause and became “a prominent supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when it was actively engaged in terrorist violence.” He even visited training camps for PLO terrorists in 1969 and used Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies to publish a tractate praising and defending the Palestinian use of terrorism in their struggle against Israel. The professor’s 2002 visit to a Lebanese university coupled his anti-Zionism with antisemitism when he declared that the “Jews are getting ready to take control of us [Arabs] and the Americans have entered the region to possess the oil resources and redraw the geopolitical map of the Arab world.”11

The founding of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding12 (ACMCU) in 1993 at Georgetown University served a similar purpose but rather than promote a secular Pan-Arabist vision, it was pro-Islamist. Indeed, the center’s foundational ideological orientation was cemented from the outset.

From its very early days, ACMCU has shown a remarkable degree of uniformity in the ideological outlook of its members and their publications. Its founders and staff mainly consist of political Islamist sympathizers who generally attack U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and defend Islamists as being pro-democracy, turning Islamophobia into a category of political abuse that conflates anti-Muslim and anti-Islamist sentiments. All this contributes to the uniform ideological conditions of the center as expressed by its faculty in their publications, public appearance, activism, and networks of relations that have formed around the center.13

Georgetown was chosen as the place for this second institution due to its proximity to Washington D.C., its reputation, and for it being connected to Sharabi.

The Saudis were major patrons of the institute. The namesake of the center, the Saudi prince Alwaleed was a notorious anti-Zionist.14 That many alumni from this prestigious university have since then gone on to occupy many positions in the U.S. State Department, the intelligence agencies, media, and NGOs15may not have been regarded as amiss by the countries that funded such initiatives such as CCAS and ACMCU. Indeed, it may have been their purpose.

To be sure, these state influences are not the origin of this distortion. For example, the beginnings of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States would start in the 1960s following crackdowns on the organization by many Middle Eastern states.16 Similarly, the origins of the Left-wing’s dalliance with the anti-Zionist cause points to an earlier culmination.17 These foreign states rather served as amplifiers and possibly as accelerants to these changes. For money and prestige to back a certain ideological orientation only encourages others to blindly or otherwise follow in the same footsteps.

Qatar’s role in this process can be demonstrated in its avid and enormous funding of American universities. The small emirate is the source of over $2.7 billion in undisclosed funds from 2014 to 2019 alone. This prodigious patronage by far outstrips top competitors like England, China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, India, and Germany.18 Qatar is adroit in its ability to mask state policy through ostensible private initiatives, and its influence extends not only to the realm of funding academic centers, but also through media.

A Strong Voice: Media Outreach

Al Jazeera in that sense can be considered to be Qatar’s crown jewel in its influence operation. While this media outlet, which was founded and is located in Qatar, asserts that it has independence from the Qatari government and is not owned by them there are grounds to question this. The owner of the company’s shares was listed as the Emir and the State of Qatar is the controlling party.19 The chairman of the board is a member of the royal family.20 This media company acquired Current TV from former Vice President Al Gore in 2013.21 As a result, Current TV became Al Jazeera America.22 The Qatari outlet’s media activities eventually raised the eyebrows of American authorities. The Department of Justice (DOJ) determined in 2020 that the progressive targeting23 AJ+, a network affiliated with Al Jazeera, had engaged in “political activities” on Qatar’s behalf to such a degree that they have to register under FARA.24 So far, however, there has been no follow up on this demand by the DOJ.25

Nor has Qatar ceased trying to purchase influence in the United States. They have even expanded their net to pay money to reach conservative populist audiences.26 Tucker Carlson’s interview with the prime minister of Qatar27 was an example of this outreach strategy. This is not to argue that Carlson is the dupe of Qatar. If one wished to steel-man Carlson’s motivations for the interview it would be that he wanted to use the Qatari politician to build his case against a then-hypothetical war with Iran. Carlson, these advocates might argue, is a skeptic and opponent of American intervention abroad.

Still, there are cracks in this steel-man defense. When Carlson was pressed by Piers Morgan over support for Israel as an American ally, Carlson responded by saying that he did not know what that word—ally—means. It is paradoxical that Carlson later used the exact same word to describe Qatar’s relationship with the United States. “The largest American air base in the Middle East is in Qatar, they’re a close ally of ours,” he told Megyn Kelly.28

This suggests that Carlson is, in fact, aware of what the term ‘ally’ means. Indeed, during his interview with the Qatari prime minister, he did not push back against the concept of having a close relationship with the Qataris. He did not during that interview question the wisdom of having a U.S. military base in Qatar. In fact, he used the presence of the air base to frame Qatar in a positive light. As Al-Thani, the prime minister, explained:

“It [the decision to host the American base] turned out to be right. The most important U.S. base outside the United States and it served the security of the United States but also it served the stability of this region.”29

Carlson did not challenge this statement at the time and as seen above echoed these sentiments in later interviews with local American pundits.

Yet, the very base in Qatar that Carlson once cited as evidence of their friendship with the United States became the object of his scrutiny and scorn when Iran attacked it to retaliate against America striking Fordow and other nuclear installations.30 “That base [in Qatar] exists to protect Israel by the way,” Carlson said matter-of-factly. He then curiously pivoted to defend Qatar by observing that the country did not need the base and that they are only hosting the base “to be nice.”31 Never mind that the base sits near the vital Strait of Hormuz—a major shipping line for oil and gas—apparently, in Carlson’s world, it only exists for the sole reason of defending Israel. So too is Carlson sure that Qatar totally has no agenda aside from offering unrequited friendship in allowing the United States the honor of this base. One can already see the strains on logic and consistency in Carlson’s commentary about the value of the base.

A Shift In The Political Realm

Carlson, however, is not the only person who has warmed to Qatar. Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-KS) sudden rush to defend Qatar as friends of America during a Congressional hearing in March on campus antisemitism was also indicative. The senator accosted those critical of Qatari largesse of American academia as being “prejudiced.” Marshall went even further, likening it to scapegoating and antisemitic hatred.

The only defensible point he raised was that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. While this is statistically true, it does not justify ignoring consistent patterns between foreign funding and ideological shifts. Marshall also claimed there were no riots or protests at Virginia Commonwealth University or Carnegie Mellon University—both recipients of Qatari funding—as an attempt to undermine a broader statistical study linking foreign money to increased antisemitism on campus.32 This argument fails for two key reasons:

1. Even if accurate, citing two cases does not invalidate a study based on a much larger dataset.

2. Protests and clashes have, in fact, occurred at these universities, contradicting his assertion.33

Ironically, Marshall himself had previously taken a far more critical stance. He excoriated Qatar in 2019 as having a “blind eye” to terrorism as he questioned American relations with the country. This view allegedly changed from 2022-2023 following lobbying efforts by the Gulf state and a visit by the politician to Qatar.34Now, it is the right of any individual—public officials included— to change their mind over a subject due to a fresh examination of the case. The fact then that Marshall’s tune and outlook changed by itself is not condemnable. It is rather that at the 2025 hearing, he advanced demonstrably false assertions while disregarding the ideological entanglements that accompany Qatar’s global posture.

Qatar has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood35 and by extension Hamas. This relationship goes beyond mere past funding and Qatar offering sanctuary to Hamas leaders.36 Qatari officials have repeatedly voiced support for the terrorist organization. “We Are All Hamas,” Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani tweeted back in 2014. The royal called for Jerusalem to rise up against the hated Zionist foe and “shoot flames of fire.” Saoud also called Ismail Haniyeh, the then-leader of Hamas, a “brother.”

“Israel’s control of the U.S. is clear. We must plan how to influence the decision-makers in the U.S,” Al Thani wrote in 2021.37Al Thani is the current Minister of Defense of Qatar and Deputy Prime Minister.38Another Qatari official who voiced similar sentiments was Majed Muhummad al-Ansari, who is a spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry, was welcomed to the United States back in 2024.39 Indeed, the Qatari state and its affiliates have since October 7, 2023 voiced support for the terrorist organization.40

Now, Qatar is not the originator of Hamas, nor is it solely responsible for exploiting America’s thirst for foreign educational investment—but it is a key exacerbator of both. Through a deliberate blend of soft power, ideological exportation, and financial influence, it has become a modern ‘purchaser’ of a democratic superpower’s intellectual and political capital. This purchased influence is not neutral. It tilts the discourse, narrows dissent, and compromises the very independence that academia, media, and government are supposed to safeguard. In failing to confront this, America risks a fate eerily similar to that of Jugurtha’s Rome: a republic whose mind, like its soul, is for sale.

13

Ibid., 41. On this philosophical phenomenon of Western institutions accommodating a shift of Islamism from ideology to identity and how the affiliates of Muslim Brotherhood came to dominate the role of spokespersons for this shift in Western discourse, see Mansour, H.A. (2025, May 12). From Ideology to Identity: The Western Metamorphosis of Post-Brotherhood Islamism. The Abrahamic Metacritique, Substack.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

From Ideology to Identity

This essay is not concerned with what the Muslim Brotherhood once was. Its founding in 1928, its ideological blueprint, and its oscillating fortunes in the Arab world have already been exhaustively narrated. Rather, I intend to draw attention to what the Brotherhood has…

Read more

a year ago · 64 likes · 8 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

.

34

Block, F. & Solomon, J. (2025, May 13). How Qatar Bought America. The Free Press.

The Free Press

How Qatar Bought America

On Wednesday, Donald Trump will travel to Qatar. On his trip, the president will visit Al Udeid Air Base, the largest American military facility in the region, and attend meetings with the ruling Al Thani family. Perhaps he will also thank them for the $400 million…

Read more

a year ago · 720 likes · 449 comments · Frannie Block and Jay Solomon

.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.1

This Fourth of July marks 249 years since the Declaration of Independence was adopted. In that document, the American colonies laid out their cause before the world, asserting not just their separation from Britain but a bold new political vision. Like many worthwhile documents, it appealed simultaneously to revolutionary ideals and conservative principles. Even in Britain—the very nation from which the colonies were severing ties—many sympathized with these kindred Americans, recognizing in them and their cause familiar appeals to liberty and law.2 Yet, sympathy alone could not avert the path to war.

What, then, was the true meaning of the Revolution?

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom!” wrote John Adams in 1777. “I hope you will make a good Use of it.”3 Adams, along with other founders, saw the Revolution not simply as a moment of rebellion but as the foundation of an enduring experiment in self-government. Later leaders echoed that vision of liberty. Andrew Jackson, the 7^th president of the United States and a veteran of the Revolutionary War, lauded his countrymen in his farewell address as “the guardians of freedom…[for] the human race.” James Polk, the 11^th president, hailed the U.S. system as “the most admirable and wisest system of well-regulated government among men ever devised by human minds.”4

From its beginning, the United States was seen as a symbol of liberty. The American zeal for liberty was pronounced from its birth. “The birthday of a new world is at hand,” wrote Thomas Paine in Common Sense, envisioning a future in which a free people, governed by reason and consent, would shape their own destiny.5 In an age of monarchies and aristocracy, a republic where power flowed from the people was extraordinary. In this new republic, there was no king—each citizen, in a sense, wore a crown.

The Fourth of July became more than a date; it became a defining and celebrated ritual of American identity. “There are but few places in the Union, where, in proportion to means and population, the day is celebrated with more lively enthusiasm,” one North Carolinian editor bragged about the Fourth in 1849. Senator Stephen R. Mallory of Florida ramped up the celebratory and triumphal rhetoric about the day’s meaning when he proclaimed in 1859 that it was not “possible for this country to pause in its career than for the free and untrammeled eagle to cease to soar.” The sense of grandeur and glory was laid thick by these preachers about what the country stood for. It would therefore be all the more ironic that two years after Mallory’s utterance, he was the secretary of the navy of a government—the Confederacy—at war with the Union.6

Such ironies reveal a deeper truth: while all profess devotion to liberty, not all mean the same thing by it. Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th president of the United States, understood this well when he declared:

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor.7

In his time, the nation settled that conflict with the abolition of slavery—one step closer to fulfilling the promise of the Declaration “that all men are created equal.”8

But these are questions of the 19th century. Are there no links between then and our own time? The concerns that animated figures like Lincoln and Mallory—about the meaning of liberty, the concentration of power, the corruption of public institutions, and the role of citizens in shaping their own government—still echo today.

This May, the grandson of John Tyler—the 10th president of the United States—passed away.9 That event, though remarkable in its span across American history, received little public attention. To be fair, John Tyler is not a widely remembered figure. His name is best recalled through the old Whig campaign slogan: “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”10

Born in 1790, just a few years after the Revolution, Tyler cast himself as part of the "Old Republican" tradition. This ideology argued for a strict interpretation of the Constitution and tended to look askew on wealth and growth as prospective inducements to decadence and corruption.

They argued in Congress and in columns of newspapers such as the Richmond Enquirer that the tariff, bank, and internal improvements11 measures would stimulate commercial interests unduly, undermine agriculture, centralize power in the federal government, and violate the Constitution…For some Americans, government aid to internal improvements…threatened to alter the delicate social and economic balance that had so far staved off corruption, by creating huge private fortunes, large cities filled with penniless laborers, and mammoth corporations lacking all human sympathy and conscience.12

Tyler’s selection as vice president on the Whig national ticket was more of a sectional and ideological balancing act by the party than his alignment with the party bigwigs like Henry Clay.13

When President William Henry Harrison died just one month into his term from pneumonia, Tyler assumed the presidency—despite some objections over the constitutional legitimacy of his succession. In doing so, he set a crucial precedent: that the vice president fully assumes the presidency upon the president’s death. Tyler's term was fraught. His Old Republican principles put him at odds with his own party, and the Whigs eventually effectively expelled him from their ranks.14 In his disdain for the party apparatus, Tyler was following George Washington’s injunction against political parties.15

One of his most lasting actions was advancing the annexation of Texas—done in the final days of his presidency and without Whig support.16 Are we so distant from the past that the Old Republicans’ concerns are no longer resonate? Are urban challenges, the concentration of wealth and influence, and the corrosive effects of blind party loyalty no longer relevant? This is not to suggest we must adopt Tyler’s answers.17 Rather, we should recognize both the changes and continuities in American politics.

All rituals evoke memory and emotion. Independence Day is no exception. It links the present generation to the founding moment of the United States and invites reflection on the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Does our government today still derive its just powers from the consent of the governed? Does our society live up to the ideals of liberty, equality, and self-rule?

In an age marked by division and disillusionment, the nation is in need of renewed purpose. To form a more perfect Union requires not only historical awareness but civic responsibility. The Constitution’s amendment process—once used to abolish slavery—is proof that the Founders’ system can adapt while preserving its core ideals. It is our duty as citizens to carry forward the torch of historical memory, to see that its flame is not extinguished, but passed on. In doing so, we preserve not just the country, but our shared future.

Fordow: The Target And Symbol

The mountain beckons and baits its foe; whether it is a trap, none can yet know. The nuclear enrichment facility built into a mountain —Fordow—became the icon of the entire Iranian nuclear program. The destruction of this mountain fortress, it was hinted, would in its own way symbolize the termination of the entire nuclear program itself. This was, after all, the same facility where the IAEA reportedly found traces of uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent during a 2023 inspection, which was very close to official weapons-grade enrichment.2 This discovery was, according to the IAEA, “inconsistent with the level of enrichment at the Fordow plant as declared by Iran.”3

The massive nuclear plant, buried under many meters of rock next to the holy city of Qom, presented difficult challenges to its attackers. The Israelis had already inflicted significant damage on many other nuclear sites in Iran as part of their Operation Rising Lion aerial campaign, which commenced on June 13, 2025.4 While the Israelis maintained they could attack and neutralize Fordow,5 there was an expectation that the United States would join in the assault.6

A Contentious Decision

The particular weapon in the American arsenal said to be capable of carrying out such a daunting mission was the GBU-57, a 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb.7 However, its use required a decision from the United States. When Israel first struck Iran, Trump had positioned himself as the man who could restrain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—if the Iranians made a deal.8 The image of an honest broker in the conflict would crumble if the U.S. became a direct participant in hostile action.

While Trump did campaign on thwarting an Iranian nuclear bomb,9 he also vowed to keep Americans out of “stupid wars”—especially further violent entanglement in Middle Eastern wars.10 The entire episode in Iran to many in the United States and in Trump’s coalition conjured up unnerving and bitter memories of the 2003 American intervention in Iraq. Claims of a quick foreign intervention, justified by a sudden nuclear threat, were this time met with intense skepticism. It did not help that Netanyahu, who testified in Congress in favor of intervening in Iraq as a private citizen, was the poster child for such claims.

Nor was the intelligence community in full agreement on Iranian intentions. The non-interventionists also had fodder in that American intelligence contradicted Israeli sources claiming an Iranian rush to a bomb.11 While IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi conceded that he could not account for clandestine activity, he stated that “we did not have any proof of a systematic effort [by Iran] to move into a nuclear weapon” during an interview.12 All of these statements served to instill doubt over whether the immediacy of action was required and whether Iran had even decided to go for a bomb.

There were even reports that the Iranians were eager to return to the negotiating table and promised flexibility—provided the United States halted the Israeli attacks.13 Accusations that Israel was dragging the United States into its war with Iran rang out even in the United States Senate.14 These claims carried weight in a country that, even before the strikes, already held a majority unfavorable view of Israel and low confidence in Netanyahu—especially among the youth of both major political parties.15

Trump’s coalition wanted the president to focus on domestic policies and avoid costly foreign adventures—particularly the kind feared in an intervention in Iran. “If he pulls the trigger, it's all over for MAGA,” Richard Baris, a top-rate pollster, said. The prospect of a rising Republican majority would be gone “for a decade” if things went south, he warned.16 He tweeted:

Starting new foreign wars never helps a presidency. But it sure as Hell can end one, especially one predicated on not starting new wars overseas when we've been invaded and neglected at home.17

Put simply, Trump’s coalition was already at risk of fracture prior to any actual American intervention against Iran. The Never Trump outlet, The Bulwark, ironically made the same argument by noting that the Iran crisis had made us “all globalists now” and that “America First” is dead, if it ever really existed.”18 There was the risk that bombs over Fordow may not only blow-up Iranian infrastructure but also Trump’s coalition.

The clamor against the need for direct intervention reached such a pitch that Vice President J.D. Vance took to X to explain the president’s position and assuage public fears. He explained that over recent months, the president had urged his foreign policy team to negotiate a deal with Iran to prevent nuclear weapons development. The president made it clear that uranium enrichment by Iran was unacceptable and emphasized that resolving this issue could happen peacefully or through other measures, with any further action being his decision alone. While acknowledging public worries about getting involved in foreign conflicts—especially given the last 25 years of troubled U.S. foreign policy—Vance asserted that the president had earned trust by focusing strictly on achieving American goals.19 The vice president’s outreach drew widespread feedback, reflecting some of the public’s nervousness about the administration’s approach.20

Decision Point

On June 19, the White House announced that the president would decide Iran’s fate “within two weeks.”21 Some interpreted this as a preview that Trump might drag his foot over making a decision.22 However, veteran reporter Seymour Hersh published an article revealing details about the administration’s war plans and shared intelligence from American and Israeli insiders indicating a “heavy American bombing” campaign in Iran was likely to begin that weekend. The operation’s primary goals were not only to destroy the advanced centrifuges protected within mountain-shielded Fordow but also to remove the Supreme Leader of Iran from power.23

As predicted, the strike took place on Saturday, June 21st, but it was not an all-out bombing campaign. American bombers hit three nuclear sites: Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. In a brief national address, Trump claimed these facilities were “totally obliterated” and called on Iran to pursue peace before the U.S. would be forced to take further action.24

Satellite images following the Fordow attack showed six bunker-bomb-created holes in the mountain. Experts debated the extent of damage sustained by the nuclear facility, largely because there was no clear confirmation or imagery of destruction below ground.25 A senior Iranian official told Reuters that most of the enriched uranium had been relocated before the bombing. This declaration was supported by satellite images showing a long line of vehicles at Fordow’s entrance in the days leading up to the strike.26

When asked about the uranium’s whereabouts, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he had been monitoring the situation closely and possessed “interesting intel,” though he refused to elaborate further. While he acknowledged that enriched uranium was “an important component,” the prime minister maintained that it was “not the sole component” nor “a sufficient component” of the nuclear program.27 President Trump, however, firmly denied that Iran had moved its nuclear materials prior to the attack.28

Israeli Strikes

Earlier applications of Israel’s Begin Doctrine were swift, technical operations—single-day strikes aimed at dismantling enemy states' nuclear programs. Operation Rising Lion, by contrast, was a far more ambitious, multi-day effort. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was significantly more dispersed and fortified than the Iraqi or Syrian facilities Israel had previously targeted. In addition to nuclear sites, Rising Lion, also targeted Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities—some of which were believed capable of carrying nuclear warheads.29

But the Israeli campaign had another dimension. From the outset, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rhetoric suggested regime change might be part of the agenda.30 Some analysts interpreted this as strategic posturing—a way to pressure the Ayatollah into making concessions to the Americans.31 Others saw deeper intent, pointing to reports that Trump had vetoed Netanyahu’s proposal to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader.32 This, they argued, implied regime change may have been considered, even if it wasn’t a declared objective. After the Fordow bombing, even Trump echoed regime change sentiments in a Truth Social post, lending credence to the idea that removing the Islamic Republic's leadership was, at the very least, part of the broader conversation.33

The Persian Prince Who Was Promised

Amid the tumult of the military operation and the clamor for regime change, the long-exiled crown prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi, stepped forward to position himself as an alternative to the ruling theocracy. His father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had ruled Iran for decades before being overthrown in the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric and the first Supreme Leader of Iran, to power. The crown prince solemnly declared that:

The Islamic Republic has come to its end and is collapsing. What has begun is irreversible. The future is bright, and together we will turn the page of history. Now is the time to stand up; the time to reclaim Iran. May I be with you soon.34

Throughout the brief war, Pahlavi made similar appeals, portraying the regime as nearing its end and pledging to replace it with a secular, democratic government.35 His rhetoric sought to cast himself as the heir not just to a throne, but to a future free of clerical rule.36

This was not the first time Pahlavi had been considered for a possible return to power. In the early 1980s, reports surfaced that Israel and the U.S. had entertained the idea of overthrowing the Islamic Republic and reinstalling the crown prince. That effort was ultimately abandoned after the resignations of Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1982. Their successors—Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Moshe Arens37—committed to ending such foreign adventures.38

Ultimately, no coup or regime change has materialized from the current operation. In fact, some reports suggest that rather than weakening, the Iranian regime responded to the attacks by tightening its grip on society, with the public rallying around the flag.39 It’s possible that part of Israel’s strategic aim was psychological: to instill a sense of vulnerability in ordinary Iranians by demonstrating that the regime's foreign policy was making the country less secure. Although a 2024 poll showed that most adult Iranians blamed the regime’s foreign policy for the country’s economic troubles, a similarly overwhelming majority believed that same policy made Iran safer.40 Israeli officials may have hoped that a short, high-profile conflict could shake that belief and prompt a shift in public sentiment—one that might eventually lead to internal pressure for change.

A Denouement: Sudden Ceasefire After Fordow Bombing

Regime change or not, the U.S. bombing of Fordow marked a dramatic escalation in the conflict. But tensions were swiftly defused when Iran responded with a symbolic retaliation—a limited strike on a U.S. base in Qatar that caused no injuries or damage. Trump, true to form, dismissed the response as “weak,” yet he also praised Iran for providing advance notice and called for peace.41

Later that same day, Trump announced that a ceasefire agreement had been reached among all parties. The purpose was clear: to bring an end to the war between Israel and Iran, which he branded “THE 12 DAY WAR.”42 Whether the events following Fordow had been choreographed or not, an off-ramp had been presented—and taken—to avoid prolonged hostilities. The operation wrapped up within the timeframe the Israelis had previously outlined, with one official stating early in the war that the operational aim was to “cause enough damage [to the nuclear program] to revert to diplomacy and get a good agreement.”43 So far, the ceasefire has held.

The cost of the war for Israel included 591 missiles launched by Iran, resulting in 29 deaths,44 3,491 injuries, and nearly 40,000 property tax claims for war-related damage. Official estimates noted that only 10–15 percent of the missiles were not intercepted.45 Iran, for its part, suffered significant casualties: 1,054 dead and 4,476 injured. According to the HRANA News Agency, of the dead, 318 were military personnel, 417 were civilians, and 319 were unidentified.46

In the end, the bombing of Fordow was about more than just a fortified nuclear facility. It became the crucible where America’s post-Iraq restraint, Israel’s existential doctrine, and Iran’s revolutionary identity collided—with consequences not just for the Middle East, but for the identity of American power itself. Trump emerged from the rubble with a ceasefire that helped preserve his domestic political coalition. Netanyahu could assure his constituents that Israel had taken decisive action against Iran’s nuclear program, while enjoying a rare moment of public unity. The Iranian regime could claim it had weathered the storm.

Return To Diplomacy

Since the cessation of hostilities, Trump has announced that the Iranians are willing to return to negotiations and pursue a possible agreement. He outlined the conditions: Iran must agree not to develop a nuclear bomb and must end uranium enrichment. Trump added that, following the military operation, he no longer particularly “care[d]” whether such “an agreement” with Iran was reached.47Nonetheless, he warned that the United States stood ready to strike again if Iran resumed enrichment efforts.48 Steven Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, echoed these terms.49Notably, these were not new demands—they reflected longstanding U.S. and Israeli positions already presented in previous, moribund rounds of negotiation.50

Earlier, after a second meeting on April 19, the U.S. and Iran had reportedly made progress, moving into technical discussions. Witkoff commented at the time on proposed caps to Iran’s nuclear program, but reiterated that enrichment on Iranian soil must cease.51 In early June, the U.S. presented an interim proposal that would have allowed Iran to continue low-level enrichment temporarily, until a regional consortium assumed responsibility for the process.52 Iranian diplomats, however, rejected the offer outright.53

Reflecting on the negotiation process, Vice President J.D. Vance stated that while there had been signs of progress in March, by mid-May the Iranians were “stonewalling.” He claimed Iran had “stopped negotiating in good faith,” which he identified as “the real catalyst” for the military strike.54

Whether the bombing was a calculated escalation intended to break the diplomatic deadlock—or an unnecessary gamble that risked fracturing Trump’s domestic coalition—remains open to debate. While the destruction of Fordow may have temporarily disrupted Iran’s enrichment capability, the absence of a durable agreement leaves that achievement potentially reversible. The ceasefire ended the war, but whether it ends the standoff that sparked it remains uncertain.

Be silent, all flesh, before G-d! For [G-d] is roused from the holy habitation.1

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!2

The aged cleric enthroned on the profane, when toppled, truly perceives it has all been in vain. What had promised the lure of protection to the high hierophant of the Iranian state was now the source of devastation. That is at least the Israeli view. The Iranian theocracy was shaken to its core on June 12, 2025,3 when the Israelis launched their waves of strikes against them.

The Strike And Its Champion

Overawing and overcoming Iranian air defenses, the attacks have leveled the Iranian military and scientific leadership and inflicted damage on their dreaded foe’s nuclear program. Iranian dreams of regional hegemony—their white whale—were already shattered as a result of the geopolitical changes that occurred in the course of the Israel-Hamas war. Assadist Syria was no more. Hezbollah was weakened. Hamas, the instigator of the conflict, is in poor shape. Now, there are reports that the other Iranian dream of nuclear power may also lie in ruins. Like Captain Ahab, in this moment, these dreams and pursuits served only to bring destruction to the Ayatollah and his people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified his fateful decision through appealing to memories of doomsdays past and presented the strike as a defensive measure. He declared that:

Today, the Jewish state refuses to be a victim of a nuclear Holocaust perpetrated by the Iranian regime. As Prime Minister, I’ve made it clear time and time again, Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal.4

Netanyahu acknowledged President Donald Trump's diplomatic efforts to resolve Iran’s nuclear enrichment program peacefully, but added that at this point “it is clear that Iran is just buying for time.”5 The subtext of this statement was that if Iran had agreed to give up its nuclear enrichment program, the strike would have been unnecessary. In fact, just hours before the strike, Iranian officials had publicly reaffirmed their unwavering commitment to their right to enrich uranium.6 This is a stance they have consistently and repeatedly declared to the international community.7

The Collapse of Diplomacy: An Assessment

The Americans too expressed frustration about the reported deadlock in diplomacy with Iran. Already early in the negotiation process, Steven Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, said that the enrichment issue was a red line for the administration.8 Netanyahu also appeared to move his position on the nuclear program from advocating its total Libya-style dismantlement as the object of diplomacy to blocking it from locally enriching its uranium.9 Attempts by the United States to negotiate a nuclear consortium that would enrich material under international supervision evidently failed to break the deadlock.10

Only days before the strike, the president vented his frustration over what he perceived as Iranian inflexibility. He said that the Iranians were “acting much differently in negotiations than it did just days ago” and much more aggressive than before. He observed in a different interview that:

They’re just asking for things you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up. They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment. We want just the opposite, and so far they’re not there. I hate to say that, because the alternative is a very, very dire one.11

Even a Trump-welcomed Russian attempt to break the deadlock proved futile.12 Indeed, in the aftermath of the IAEA’s declaration that Iran was formally non-compliant with its previous nuclear treaties’ obligations,13 the regime announced it would be expanding and further activating their enrichment capabilities.14

Then came Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s announcement in a Congressional hearing that there were “plenty of indications that they [the Iranians] have been moving their way towards something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon.”15 Put simply, the tempo of events prior to negotiations scheduled for Sunday16 was moving in the opposite and unproductive direction of where Trump needed them to be for a deal. The diplomat, therefore, toils and strains, wishing to prevent that which came to pass anyway. The elusive white whale of a diplomatic deal—glimpsed in moments of hope, yet forever unstruck—remained vexingly unharpooned.

A Farewell To Nukes Or Regime Change: Israeli Priorities

While the Israeli strike on Iran has been primarily directed to knock out Iranian nuclear capacities, there is also an additional undercurrent to them. Netanyahu, in his address to the nation, turned to the Iranian people and proclaimed:

So, too, do the brave people of Iran [have the chance for a brighter future]. And I have a message for them. Our fight is not with you. Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe that the day of your liberation is near. And when that happens, the great friendship between our two ancient peoples will flourish once again.17

Naturally, there is no guarantee of a regime change occurring in Iran. The population, though it may not like the government, could rally around the flag. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was after all consolidated following Iraq’s invasion. Yet, time may have worn out its welcome or chances for these aging revolutionaries. But this aspiration of a forthcoming regime change may turn out to be (though not necessarily is) Israel’s white whale.

Still, the Israeli leadership made it a point, at least in the first waves of strikes, not to target Iranian political leadership in their decapitation attack. “We have no plans to kill them,” Tzahi Hanegbi, Israel’s National Security Council chief, said. He added that the sole overriding ambition of the strike was to make the mullahs of Iran renounce their nuclear aspirations.18 Regime change may be left toward other players as well as other means or a different time.

The Trumpian Off-Ramp

Even after zero-hour, President Trump held out the opportunity for an off ramp to Iran.19 He wrote:

I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done…There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.20

In another social media post, he recounted how his two-month ultimatum to Iran had expired, but he still hoped they would seize a second chance.21 The Iranian leadership, predictably, responded by walking out of negotiations.22

Fallout and the Future: Nuclear Rebuilding or Ruination?

In its moment of need, Iran stands diminished. Hezbollah, already bloodied from their own clash with the Israelis, stated that they will stay out of the armed exchange between Iran and Israel.23 Hamas’s support amounted to a symbolic thank-you to Iran for dying for Palestine.24 The Axis of Resistance, battered by years of proxy conflict with the Jewish state, is past its prime.

Still, some may note that Iranian leadership, far from conceding anything, has vowed in the event of an attack to rebuild their nuclear program25—evidence, they argue, that the strike was counterproductive. At most, Israel delayed the inevitable. Others may go further, arguing the strike highlights the need for states to acquire nuclear weapons to insulate themselves from such interventions. Critics point to NATO’s intervention in Libya. Gaddafi, after all, gave up his nuclear program. Once a model of disarmament, Libya became a cautionary tale.26

Lessons and Warnings: The Perils of the Nuclear Threshold

Yet these critics miss several key points. Far from the pursuit of nuclear weapons deterring intervention, in Iran’s case, they invited it—especially due to its annihilationist rhetoric toward Israel and support for similar-minded groups.27 The hardening of Iran’s position at the negotiating table, alongside newly announced enrichment plans, provided the easy justification for Israeli action. The traumatic October 7^th invasion of Israel by Hamas only caused the Israeli security establishment to adopt a more aggressive policy toward their own security. Whereas they permitted pro-Iranian militia groups like Hezbollah to amass installations and resources near the border, now such activities would not be tolerated.28

If Iran tries to restore its nuclear program, Israel will be similarly inclined to strike again. The issue will remain a constant sore unless Iran agrees to a settlement—or succeeds in deceiving the world until it acquires a bomb. Given the Mossad’s infiltration of the Iranian state, the latter would be difficult to achieve. Furthermore, renewed Iranian nuclear ambitions would cause not just Israeli angst but regional anxiety. Many Arab leaders reportedly privately cheered at the news of the preventative military action.29 They have repeatedly joined in a coalition to intercept Iranian projectiles heading toward Israel.30

In the event Iran manages to acquire a nuclear bomb, other states have vowed to follow suit.31 Mass nuclear proliferation in the Middle East would not represent a positive development in the region. At any rate, it is debatable whether Iran will actually rebuild its nuclear project. If Israeli experiences in 1981 with their strike on an Iraqi reactor and in 2007 in Syria are any metrics, such military activities can be contained events and effectively signal the end of nuclear projects. One might argue that cases may bend one way until they do not. Iran could yet represent a break in this limited pattern. They have already retaliated against Israel directly in response to the strikes.32 Yet, I suspect in this contest of arms and will, the Israelis have technological overmatch capabilities over the Iranians enabling them to inflict greater damage than they suffer.33 Events, I anticipate, will test that assumption.

Other critics may argue that this is not an American conflict and that Iran poses no threat to America or its interests. In a different breath, some of these same critics also declare that a strike on Iran would ensure the regime acts out against American bases and assets in the Middle East leaving a sizable death toll. A state that chants “Death to America” on at least an annual basis34 and funds terrorist organizations that have ties to the human smuggling and drug trade35 in the Americas is no friend to the United States. That state with a nuclear bomb would not be a friend either. For some though Iran, even with a bomb, would be no threat insofar as their military reach was not extended to the United States. This is ultimately wishful thinking, for the ballistic missiles today will have greater ranges tomorrow until they can reach into the United States and directly threaten American cities and towns. In the event a hostility began, the cost of taking out the Iranian nuclear and ballistic arsenal would become a much riskier and more lethal proposition.

The wise foresee and safeguard themselves from these issues through direct and indirect judicious maneuvering. The clever might not foresee them, but all the same, they prevent the worst from occurring. The fool remains ignorant of the perils until it is too late. The Israelis, through their action against Iran, have demonstrated they are willing to place their lives and treasure on the line to prevent an outcome detrimental to American interests. The Israelis are also doing so because the same outcome would be detrimental to their own vital interests.

Thoughts On Netanyahu: Mistakes And Wisdom

A wiser critic might still point out that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others have made numerous predictions about when Iran would acquire a nuclear weapon—predictions that, so far, have not come to fruition.36 And they would be right to make that observation. Yet, the recent diplomatic deadlock—and Iran’s own aforementioned public pronouncements—suggest not a willingness to forfeit its enrichment program, but an intent to expand it. In doing so, Iran has effectively made Netanyahu’s core argument for him: that it has no intention of abandoning its pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

Various critics call Netanyahu an inveterate warmonger. Yet, his history in power offers a more complex picture. In 1996, he avoided war with Syria despite misleading intelligence from a then-trusted source.37 Until the events of October 7, 2023, Netanyahu did not embark on a regime change war in the Gaza Strip. He limited the recent Lebanese war to achievable ends and sought to degrade Hezbollah, not utterly eliminate it. In his youth, after his experience in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when pressed if Israel could have peace in the Middle East, he replied:

Yes, I sincerely hope so. Look, I am 28 years old, I had to defend my country in two wars and many battles, nobody wants peace more than Israel.38

In that mold, Netanyahu became the Israeli prime minister who signed a historic series of peace agreements with Arab states through the Abraham Accords. He has argued for their expansion to other states39 such as Saudi Arabia. He offered the outlines of a two-state solution to the Palestinians in 2020.40 The veteran Israeli politician’s toolbelt therefore includes more than just wars and the desire for them.

Even so, the American public has long tired of protracted wars in the Middle East. They justifiably criticize how fabricated stories about weapons of mass destruction41 led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq, and how repeated efforts at nation-building in foreign lands have often ended in failure and disillusionment. Netanyahu, in this respect, did himself no favors when in 2002, as a private citizen, he publicly supported U.S. intervention in Iraq and advocated for similar actions elsewhere.42 However, even Netanyahu balked at John Kerry’s assertion that American-led nation-building could prevent Afghanistan from falling back into Taliban control.43 He also warned of the dangers associated with U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring, particularly under the Obama administration.44

The Trump administration shares many of its countrymen’s criticisms of past American military interventions in the Middle East and skepticism toward nation-building efforts abroad. Currently, there are no direct engagements between American and Iranian forces; instead, the conflict is largely limited to armed exchanges between Israel and Iran. In this context, Trump has sought to position himself as the mediator who can restrain Israeli actions if Iran agrees to negotiate terms regarding its nuclear program. It remains to be seen whether this labor is rewarded.

A Prayer

Let us pray that the children of Israel, Ishmael, and Cyrus may one day soon dwell peacefully and securely in their own lands. May the scourge of contempt and hatred be banished, and may they know war no more. In hard moments such as these, we are reminded that the aspirations of mankind can be stirred not only by pleasures but also by hope—whether that hope is a white whale or not.

[V]ice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts; that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy1

An Assassination

Violent death came suddenly on the streets of Washington D.C., on the night of May 21, 2025. The man emerged from his car to confront his victims—diplomats of the State of Israel—outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. A scene of smiles turned into slaughter. The flash of light from the muzzle of the assassin’s handgun revealed his dark design. His victims—30-year-old Yaron Lischinsky, a Christian, and 26-year-old Sarah Milgram—were struck by bullets. Milgram tried to crawl away from her killer, only for him to unload his weapon on her.2

Yaron planned to propose to Sarah in Jerusalem the following week. Their lives—and their future—were cut short.3 Love was murdered by hate.

“I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” the alleged assailant, waving a keffiyeh, reportedly said in the aftermath of the act. The accused assassin, who had traveled from Chicago to D.C. the day before, reportedly told police that he had purchased tickets to the event at the Jewish Museum a mere three hours before it began.4

The siren song of the alleged assassin’s cause was also reputedly laid out in his manifesto. Public indifference to “the genocidal apartheid state,” he claimed, moved him to commit the violent deed. The manifesto asserted that his action would have been justifiable during Israel’s 2014 Protective Edge operation in the Gaza Strip, but that it would have been unintelligible to the public. Now, he claimed, the deed may have public recognition.5

Notably absent from the manifesto is any declaration of a specific target. Omitted are any acknowledgment of Palestinian agency, Hamas’s existence, and its human shield tactics. Similarly, omitted is the basic fact that the Arab population of the Gaza Strip and Palestine increased before and after the 2014 operation6 —at the hands of that same “genocidal apartheid state.” Such omissions were either too inconvenient or too subtle for the attention of the manifesto’s author. Ideology acted to obscure rather than reveal reality and complexity.

The accused is alleged to have had past affiliations with hard-leftist groups such as the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation.7 Armed with a gun, bolstered by an ideological cause, and impassioned by dubious allegations,8 this reputed assassin condemned his victims to death.

Meta Tragedies

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour captured the fatal absurdity well when he wrote:

A communist activist murdering a young Christian-Jewish couple who support Jews in the name of an Islamist cause symbolizes the meta dimension of modern antisemitism that is seldom discussed.9

This “meta dimension” is the ideological absurdity in which opposing dogmas—Islamist extremism and Marxist radicalism—can converge in their hatred of Jews.

Yet there is still another layer of tragic irony to this calamity: the event the diplomats attended was focused on facilitating humanitarian aid to Gaza— the very place the alleged killer claimed motivated his homicidal rage.10 The murdered couple were described as people yearning for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.11Absurdity led to tragedy—evidence that what began in egregious error ended in everlasting infamy.

Communism And Its Opposition To Zionism

One might be tempted to write the entire act off as an act of blind madness done by one man in his delusions, but this would be itself an error. This kind of violence and animosity by the hard-left toward Israel and Zionism is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, this anti-Zionist crusade is a long-established pattern of conduct.

Vladimir Lenin, the founding leader of the Soviet Union, denounced Zionism as well as antisemitism.12 To him the Jews were merely a people to be treated by the Soviet state as individuals like any other without any recognition of their national aspirations. Zionism, he charged, was nothing but a reactionary bourgeois nationalistic movement and a plaything of imperialist powers.13 It would not further his revolution. Jewish particularity was to be eschewed in favor of Soviet universalism.14

Decades before the State of Israel, Zionists—in addition to religious Jews—were hounded by Soviet authorities and persecuted.15 Though there would be a partnership16 between the Soviets and the Zionists during the crucial period of 1947-1949, when the State of Israel emerged, this was a brief and passing episode. This alliance was a short-lived extension of the wartime Allied anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-racist coalition, which was fracturing with the onset of the Cold War.17 The recent memory of the Holocaust created a stirring of conscience among many in this camp. Yet, it was a moment that was not to last.

The Anti-Zionist Purges and The Soviet Inversion

The pro-Soviet communist wing disavowed their support of Zionism not soon after the birth of the nascent Jewish state. Joseph Stalin’s hopes that Israel would become the vanguard and vassal of the Soviet empire were dashed in 1949, when Israeli communist and pro-Soviet parties performed poorly in elections. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s decision to form a government without pro-Soviet sympathies marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet-Zionist alliance.

By the fall of 1949, those communists who had supported the Zionist cause during the crucial period of 1947-1949 were marked for purging by the Soviet premier. Marxist-Leninist orthodox antipathy reasserted itself partly due to Stalin’s own antisemitism, his fears about conspiratorial accusations that Jews were the agents of Western democracies, and the enthusiastic support Soviet Jews expressed for the State of Israel.18

The Soviet Union’s purging of those sympathetic toward the Zionist cause did not remain boxed up within their own borders. Countries that belonged to the Warsaw Bloc followed the example of their master. The early 1950s were defined by Zionism becoming a term of abuse by the communists.

For the communist doctrinarian, a purge of historical memory took place. The primary victim of Hitlerite aggression was not the Jew but the Soviet Union. All the while, the propaganda associated with these anti-Zionist purges often employed “anti-Semitic themes about vast Jewish power and its connections to capitalism and imperialism.” The trinity of anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and anti-racism were inverted to oppose the existence of the Jewish state and portray it as a stooge or the center of cosmic evil.19

The Soviets and their allies placed a special emphasis on their Zionist foe. An entire state-sponsored movement dedicated to writing scientific-sounding literature denouncing Zionism, called Zionology, was born. These Zionologists, the authors of such tracts, based their articles ironically on the old, discredited theories and texts from the pro-Czarist and blatantly antisemitic Black Hundreds and Nazis. These modern authors revised these texts to fit their purpose. Ironically, many within this movement came from “a loose Great Russian nationalist movement, which arose in the late 1950s and gained strength in the 1960s,” to revive “the extreme right and Russia’s pre-revolutionary past.”20 The emerging anti-Zionism, given the appearance of scholarly and state legitimacy, was thus heavily wedded to the old antisemitism.

In recycling antisemitic material from these disgraced movements, the Soviets and their allies made it respectable once again. The ‘anti-racist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ Left was absorbing old hatreds repackaged in a new form. It did not take long before it spread beyond the Soviet Bloc. The ascendancy of the New Left in the West would see to that. For they too, under the spell of Soviet and Arab propaganda, would condemn Israel as a racist, fascist, colonial, “parasitical state” allied with imperialism.21

The West German New Left’s Turn (1967)

The West German hard left’s embrace of anti-Zionism is particularly revealing of the broader New Left’s ideological turn22 against the Jewish state. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many in West Germany felt a deep sense of historical responsibility and a moral obligation to do no more harm to Jewish life.23 Yet by 1967, a radical segment of the New Left began to repudiate this commitment. Ironically, the turning point had little to do with Israel itself. The turn occurred in short proximity to the Six Day War. It was sparked by the Shah of Iran’s visit to West Germany. During protests against the Shah’s regime, a West Berlin policeman—later revealed to be a Stasi agent—shot and killed a demonstrator, Benno Ohnesorg.24

This incident reinforced the German New Left’s belief that the government and the German political establishment was authoritarian and neo-fascist. When the German conservative aligned press, which were pro-Israel outlets, attacked the New Left, they also turned against Israel.25 Thus, opposition to perceived authoritarianism at home morphed into ideological opposition to the Jewish state abroad.

The radicalization of the West German New Left was rapid—and, before long, turned violent against the country’s remaining Jewish community. On the 31st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous 1938 Nazi pogrom, a bomb was discovered at the Jewish Community Center in Berlin. Though it failed to detonate, the symbolism was unmistakable. Days later, a radical leftist group claimed responsibility—not only for planting the bomb, but also for “vandalizing several Jewish memorials.” In a manifesto titled “Shalom and Napalm,” the group declared war on the West German state and denounced its pro-Israel stance.

What emerged from this declaration was a grotesque inversion: Holocaust memory, they claimed, served only to protect Zionist crimes. Those Germans who remained “guilt-ridden” over the genocide were cast as cowards, accomplices to a new form of oppression. In this warped framework, attacking Jewish institutions and erasing Jewish memory were reimagined as acts of revolutionary liberation.26 Here, the old coalition—anti-fascist, anti-racist, and once committed to Jewish safety—had not merely fractured; it had been ideologically reversed.

The group made its aims unmistakably clear:

No longer are both actions [the attempted bombing and vandalism] to be defamed as an outgrowth of right-wing radicals. Rather these actions are a decisive link of international socialist solidarity...The Jews who were expelled by fascism have themselves become fascists who, in collaboration with American capital, want to eradicate the Palestinian people…we are aiding [through these actions] the victory of the Palestinian revolution and serve to bring about the renewed defeat of world imperialism.27

The total reversal of moral categories is laid bare. Even the genocide canard appears here asserting that Jews, once the victims of extermination, have become its agents.28 One can surmise that this rhetorical sleight-of-hand served a psychological function: it sought to overwrite the memory of the Holocaust, to replace guilt with justification. In this 1969 manifesto, we already hear the siren song that would echo decades later in the reputed manifesto of the alleged assassin who gunned down two young diplomats in Washington D.C. Then, as now, Zionism was to be eradicated through the targeting of Jewish lives and Jewish spaces.

The crowning achievement that this inversion had was in the passage of the 1975 “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution through the General Assembly of the United Nations. This resolution, also passed on the anniversary of Kristallnacht,29 was the brainchild of the communist and Arab coalition.30 This ideology had been given the rubber stamp of international legitimacy. This was despite the Israeli and American ambassadors demonstrating the fallacy and falsity of the resolution itself. The resolution’s notoriety became fully revealed when, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, it effectively declared Zionism to be a form of Nazism:

Still, one cannot but ponder the situation we have made for ourselves in the context of the Soviet statement on that not so distant occasion. If, as the distinguished delegate declared, racism is a form of Nazism — and if, as this resolution declares, Zionism is a form of racism — then we have step to step taken ourselves to the point of proclaiming — the United Nations is solemnly proclaiming — that Zionism is a form of Nazism. What we have here is a lie — a political lie of a variety well known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage.31

The inversion had come full circle. The Holocaust had—albeit briefly— shocked elements within the hard-left to reconsider their historical animosity toward Zionism. The sheer barbarism of the Nazis affected not only the Jews but was also felt across Europe.

The same ideological camp that once sought national dignity for Jews who survived the horrors of Nazism now turned against those very survivors—accusing them of embodying the evil they themselves endured.32 The patent absurdity of the resolution led to its repeal in a 1991 United Nations General Assembly vote33—but the moral damage had already been done.

Conclusion: The Age of Inversion

The moral consensus that once rallied global support behind Zionism in the years 1947–1949 has been turned on its head. At that time, Jews were unequivocally seen as victims of racism, imperialism, and fascism—most starkly revealed by the Holocaust’s industrial-scale genocide, which the Nazis called the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. That question itself had deep roots in European history, stemming from Roman imperial repression and the subsequent scattering of the Jewish people across the world.

Supporters of the Zionist cause could point not only to the horrors of the Holocaust, but also to Arab collaboration with the Nazis as evidence of ongoing fascistic hostility toward Jews.34 They saw that imperial powers—especially the British and French foreign offices—were largely opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. This anti-Zionist posture was shared by the American State Department as well.35 Thus, they perceived that, in those critical years, Zionism was not a tool of empire, but a challenge to it—a national liberation movement born out of historical suffering and global indifference.

Today, however, all too many on the political left—who claim antiracism, antifascism, and anti-imperialism as core values—denounce Israel and Zionism as embodiments of the very evils they once resisted: racism, fascism, and imperialism. This inversion recasts Israel from a refuge against genocide into a genocidal state, ignoring the steady growth of the Palestinian population and erasing Jewish historical claims to the land. Palestinians are portrayed solely as the oppressed, stripped of agency, while Israel becomes a symbol of ideological hatred.

Indeed, to these secular totalizers, Israel is more than a nation—it is an object of directed hate. It has become, for the worshippers of ideological purity, a kind of Antichrist: its destruction imagined as the expiation of the West’s sins. If not a messianic cleansing, then it is seen as a symbolic harbinger—the doom of their own sin-soaked civilization. To be truly human is thus retranslated as to be anti-Israel.

This infusion of belief with political dogma has led not only to rhetorical excess, but to real-world violence—against Jewish communities across the globe. It led, most recently, to the murder of two young diplomats at a Washington D.C. event featuring advocacy for humanitarian aid to Gaza. For the assassin and his ideological kin, such violence is not senseless—it is sacramental. A dark form of salvific liturgy, the flash of the gun promising redemption through destruction.

But perhaps hatred alone does not account for such acts. Maybe it was not hatred, after all, that killed on that night in D.C.—but love. A warped, narcissistic love. A self-worship masquerading as virtue. A belief in one's own power to redeem the world through bloodshed, and to rise above the moral mediocrity of the “little men” making up humanity. The assassin did not merely seek vengeance; he sought transcendence—an exaltation built upon the altar of the innocent. And yet, at its heart, this is not only a delusion of grandeur—it is a refusal to recognize the agency of others. A rejection of responsibility. It is the erasure of the moral claims of real people in service of an imagined, impersonal good.

Here one personal episode may be instructive. I once had a conversation with someone who firmly believed that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. They told me their love for humanity had led them to this conclusion. I challenged this person with the dilemma of their love: if they truly believed genocide was happening, surely, they would support evacuating the Gazan population to save lives. I reminded this individual that the Jews in Europe, who sought refuge from mass murder, did not act as if land was more important than life itself. The supreme gift of life should be the highest priority for anyone who claims to love humanity.

Yet this appeal fell on deaf ears. The person rejected the proposition, revealing that their so-called love was founded on a belief that, paradoxically, according to their own logic, condemned others to mass death. For this lover of humanity, the land was more important than life. Being anti-Israel mattered more than saving Palestinian lives for this humanitarian. At the same time, there was a refusal to accept the logical consequences of their position. The irrationality was plain to see—for those willing to look.

Obviously, Israel is not beyond criticism, and not all criticism of Israel is riddled with illogic or ill intent. Similarly, I do not seek to downplay the legitimate grievances and suffering of the Palestinians. I do, however, recognize their agency—something many of their so-called supporters refuse to acknowledge. For too many, the siren song of ideology has clouded their capacity to reason. Reality and responsibility have become petty inconveniences, and gross errors have calcified into systemic delusions, fueling deranged actions. Thus, does the assassin of moral reason stalk the streets, hunting their next victim.

5

Klipperstein, K. (2025, May 22). The Israel Embassy Shooter Manifesto. Substack.

Ken Klippenstein

The Israel Embassy Shooter Manifesto

I’ve obtained the alleged manifesto written by Elias Rodriguez, suspect in the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC on Wednesday…

Read more

a year ago · 1520 likes · 115 comments · Ken Klippenstein

.

22

For the Arab New Left and its embrace of the Palestinian cause, see Hulkower, I. (2025, May 8). Pity The Nation Revisited Part 1: A Lamentation of Lebanese Politics. Substack. https://ihulkower.substack.com/p/pity-the-nation-revisited-part-1; Mansour, H.A. (2025, June 19). Arabs After Defeat: Revolution Inside the Revolution. Substack, The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

Arabs After Defeat: Revolution Inside the Revolution

In the immediate aftermath of the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967, there were clear indicators of a significant shift, marking the end of one era and the onset of another. The radio broadcasts from Cairo, which had previously been politically oriented, began airing more Quranic recitations and replaced political programming with religious sermons. This change reflected a broader sense of disorientation on the Arab streets. The public had been conditioned to expect an assured victory over what was perceived as the malevolent forces of imperialism and Zionism. This belief was deeply ingrained, having been reinforced over years through a constant stream of publications, newspapers, movies, radio programs, songs, and speeches, all of which had promised that triumph was historically inevitable…

Read more

2 years ago · 36 likes · 5 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

. How both the West and Arab Left played on each other over the romanticization of the Palestinian cause, see Mansour, H.A. (2025, May 25). The Gaza Passion Play and the Mythmakers of Revolution. Substack, The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

The Gaza Passion Play and the Mythmakers of Revolution

In a fleeting moment from Lebanese radical Dalal Bizri’s journals of the Lebanese Civil War, in 1975, two young female Lebanese revolutionaries, Zeinab and Dalal herself, pose dutifully for a French journalist from Libération, Jean-Paul Sartre’s radical publication. They stand definitely near sandbag fortifications, AK-47s clenched awkwardly in their hands, expressions hardened by the weight of symbolic expectation. The French journalist, named Karen, meticulously documents these militant women, champions of a feminist revolutionary brigade, fighters ready to lay down their lives for socialist liberation, and contrasts them with the domesticated Western woman…

Read more

a year ago · 77 likes · 7 comments · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

.

34

For examples, Fishman, J. (2016, August 22). The Historical Problem of Haj Amin al-Husseini, “Grand Mufti” of Jerusalem. Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. https://jcpa.org/article/historical-problem-hajj-amin-al-husseini-grand-mufti-jerusalem/; Gil-White, F. (2024, May 28). The responsibility of the Arab Palestinian movement in the German Nazi Final Solution. The Management of Reality.

The Management of Reality

The responsibility of the Arab Palestinian movement in the German Nazi Final Solution

It seems obvious to most that there is no connection between the Arab Palestinian movement and the German Nazi Final Solution: the WWII genocide of the European Jews…

Read more

2 years ago · 95 likes · 3 comments · Francisco Gil-White

; see Mansour, H.A. (2023, December 26). The Hour of Liberation. Substack, The Abrahamic Metacritique.

The Abrahamic Metacritique

The Hour of Liberation

“This is Berlin; long live the Arabs!” With this catchphrase, Yunis Bahri (1903 - 1979) opened his first German broadcast on the pan-Arab shortwave radio station on April 7th, 1939. Bahri, a figure who would later be wrapped in so much intrigue and myth, was a well-known Iraqi propagandist and journalist. He served as the primary host of the radio station of King Ghazi of Iraq before the former’s death and Bahri’s subsequent relocation to Germany in 1938. Described by some as an Iraqi “Lord Haw Haw”, Bahri was “bawdy, funny, and exciting”. He had a powerful, bombastic voice, proper Arabic pronunciation, and unmatched skill in quick-witted puns and snarky comments. Until the war's end in 1945, the Voice of Berlin would be a sensation in the Middle East, broadcasting religious sermons, political news, and mass calls for armed revolts, all shrouded in the intrigue of Nazism's supreme art of conspiracy theories, antisemitism, and demagoguery. Arab sympathy for Nazi Germany, already at an advanced stage, became an uncontrollable mass phenomenon, and vicious hatred towards Jews, the United States, and Great Britain was firmly inserted into modern Arab mass culture at its birth. Radio Berlin became the first modern mass Arab media medium in the Middle East…

Read more

3 years ago · 34 likes · Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

; Kuntzel, M. (2023). The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II? Fathom Journal. https://fathomjournal.org/the-1948-arab-war-against-israel-an-aftershock-of-world-war-ii/. For continued Nazi sympathies toward the Arab world after the end of Nazi Germany, see Eichmann’s attitude on the 1956 Israel-Egyptian war and his injunction to the Arab world. Murray, D. (2024). The profundity of evil. The New Criterion. https://newcriterion.com/article/the-profundity-of-evil/.

Politics In The World

“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable—the art of the next best,” spake Otto von Bismarck, the 19^th-century German statesman and master of realpolitik.1 His maxim underscores the necessity for statesmen to navigate the world as it is—not as they wish it to be—settling for imperfect but achievable outcomes that serve the national interest. Idealism, however noble, can cloud urgent pragmatic concerns. The new leadership in the White House believes American interests are shifting alongside a changing world.2

We no longer live in the bipolar era of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War era of Western triumphalism—the so-called “end of history”3—has eroded and ended. The ascent of China and a more multipolar world order have profoundly altered geopolitical dynamics. Within this evolving context, a truce between the United States and the Houthis was announced on May 6. What should we make of this truce? Does the truce address American interests? What does it portend for Israel?

Truce Overview and Critiques

According to the terms of the agreement, the Houthis would lift their blockade on Red Sea shipping in exchange for a cessation of American airstrikes on their forces in Yemen.4Notably absent from the deal was any provision requiring the Houthis to stop launching missile attacks on Israel—America’s key regional ally. Critics were quick to highlight that Israeli officials appeared unaware of the agreement until after its announcement—a diplomatic oversight that some consider troubling.5

This criticism gains weight when one considers that the Houthis initiated their blockade and missile strikes in solidarity with Hamas and as part of the Iranian-backed "axis of resistance." Their slogan, as reflected on the Houthi flag, famously calls for the destruction of Israel, the United States, and a curse upon Jews. Some critics argue that a joint U.S.-Israeli negotiating front may have produced a more favorable outcome.

Strategic Considerations from the U.S. Perspective

These criticisms, however, miss a crucial point: the U.S. action was primarily about ensuring freedom of navigation and protecting global trade. The Red Sea is a critical artery of commerce, and the Suez Canal is a strategic asset. The Trump administration viewed the Houthi blockade as a threat to major national interests.

According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the airstrikes were launched to protect the country’s “core national” interests by ensuring the uninterrupted flow of maritime trade and to reaffirm U.S. military deterrence in the region. He also highlighted the Houthis' ties to Iran, framing them as part of a broader geopolitical struggle.6 This connection was echoed by President Trump, who, even after the truce, continued to denounce Iran’s proxy wars and advocate for the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.7

The president himself has mentioned that he sees the Suez Canal as a geostrategic asset for the United States given its facilitation of global trade and commerce. He added that such an asset should provide free passage for American vessels.8 This goal would be difficult to achieve if the Suez were under blockade and global trade through that strategic outlet severely curtailed. As negotiations with Iran are well underway, such a truce could additionally demonstrate goodwill and establish trustworthiness.

Trump’s realist view is clear: global trade must remain unimpeded, and Iran’s regional destabilization must be countered through pressure and strategic leverage. Within this framework, the truce with the Houthis enables Washington to de-escalate militarily while preserving its strategic posture vis-à-vis Tehran.

Avoiding the Quagmire of Intervention

A broader military campaign—particularly a ground invasion of Yemen—would risk entangling the United States in a costly and protracted conflict. Historical precedent supports this caution. Egypt’s intervention in Yemen (1962–1970) became a quagmire, with President Gamal Abdel Nasser calling it his "Vietnam." “I sent a company to Yemen and ended up reinforcing it with 70,000 troops,” he said.9 The Saudi-led coalition’s own recent intervention in Yemen has also failed to secure a decisive outcome.10 Yemen today remains divided in a precarious truce between government loyalists and the Houthis.

Ideologically, Trump, though he is a tough talker, is a skeptic of military interventions. He articulated his vision of American foreign policy and his distrust of neoliberal and neoconservative crusades in his recent speech at Riyadh:

In the end the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.11

The United States by implication is not in the mood for a long and expansive attempt to remake Yemen into a different image. There is no civilizing mission abroad in this approach. Trump has prided himself on his record of bringing peace and avoiding war. The president’s electoral coalition supports this foreign policy vision, as they are fatigued from the War on Terror and its lengthy engagements with nebulous aims. They view foreign adventurism with skepticism and see mushrooming internal issues as demanding more immediate attention.

The Israel Angle: Abandonment or Realignment?

Having said this, both Donald Trump and his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have been adamant in proclaiming that their foreign policy moves in the Middle East is not an abandonment of Israel.12 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied too that there was any great schism between Israel and the United States.13 Perhaps not a great rift, but tensions are there. That said, no two states will always share the same views or interests. Tensions are bound to happen and differences bound to surface. In terms of the American-Houthi truce, let us examine what its effects are on Israel.

There are mixed views about whether the agreement did benefit Israel by truly ending the Houthi blockade.14 Recently, the Houthis announced their intention to renew the blockade—this time focusing on ships traveling to the port of Haifa.15 While they lack the demonstrated capability to enforce a direct blockade in the Eastern Mediterranean, they could target vessels transiting the Red Sea that trade with Haifa. It remains unclear whether this declaration will be effectively enforced, and, if so, whether the United States will consider it a violation of the truce.

At the same time, this agreement does not prevent the Houthis from firing their missiles on Israel— which they have continued to do since the truce.16 However, the truce likewise does not prevent the Israelis from responding to these attacks. Israel thus retains its liberty of action. It has demonstrated its long reach on multiple occasions by striking Houthi targets.17 Granted, Israel’s ability to project force is more limited than the America’s, but its proximity to the region necessitates active engagement. Indeed, Israel’s status as a regional power that regularly punches above its weight is so well-established that it scarcely needs further elaboration.

Strategic Resilience in U.S.-Israeli Relations

The U.S.-Israeli relationship is both strategic and historically rooted. From early American leaders like John Adams to the Cold War realignments under Richard Nixon, there has long been U.S. support for a Jewish homeland.18 Nixon though articulated that this was balanced with broader regional diplomacy:

Israel’s interests are better served to have the United States a friend of Israel’s neighbors and potential enemies, than to leave a vacuum which the Soviet Union would fill. I still believe that and think that should be American policy today.19

For their part, Israeli leaders, including Ben Gurion and Netanyahu, have traditionally accepted America’s pursuit of ties with moderate Arab states as a strategic necessity, not a betrayal.20 This legacy frames how both countries now approach divergence on Iran, Yemen, and regional threats.

Despite ongoing tensions, American relations with Israeli officials remain pragmatic and grounded in strategic considerations. Dr. Dan Schueftan, an Israeli academic and advisor to multiple prime ministers,21 put it well when he argued that October 7^th, far from undercutting Israel’s position in the region, ultimately strengthened it. Arab nations increasingly recognize Israel’s technological and military value—and its reliability, especially compared to an unpredictable Washington. It is thus emerging as a political force after long isolation. When pressed on why this was, he said:

Because we're a highly effective ally. We're the strongest force available to Arab countries against their own enemies—stronger than other Arabs and more reliable than the Americans. Because in the United States, you might end up with someone like Barack Obama, whom you cannot trust, or Joe Biden, whom you can trust only partially. We share three common enemies with most Arab countries: Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and frankly, American stupidity. What the Arab states want—and what we've already achieved—is a stronger relationship with the United States. Even when the president isn't friendly, even when there are disagreements, the relationship between Israel and America continues to strengthen… That's exactly what the Arabs want as well—good relations with the U.S. without having to listen to Washington’s nonsense.22

He explained that Washington’s folly encompassed, but was not limited to, its decision to lift sanctions on Iran under Biden, their empowering of the Houthis, and their undercutting of the Saudis and Emiratis. Even here, there is a recognition that Israeli and regional interest may not always align with American interests or at least an indictment over how the Americans pursued their interests in counterproductive ways. Trump’s Riyadh address, in which he pledged that the era of America lecturing others on their internal affairs was over, directly addresses some of Schueftan’s concerns.

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help,” a famous psalm advises.23 I think there is good cause to believe Israelis broadly understand the general trajectory of American foreign policy and the need for realism. Americans, too, tend to appreciate those who can stand up for themselves. Indeed, the traditional Israeli ethos has always been that Israel will defend itself by itself. As Israel’s founding Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, once told the American ambassador in 1949, “Had the Jews waited for the US or the UN to declare their own state, they would have been exterminated.”24 That view was not unwarranted given the State Department’s maneuvers to block the emergence of a Jewish state and the United Nations’s lack of an effective response to an Arab invasion of the nascent state. During Israel’s War of Independence, the United States engaged in an arms embargo on the region and tried to severely undermine Israeli military gains in the war. It would be a while before the two countries formed very close relations.

American Aid, Independence, and Diplomatic Leverage

Israel must be a reliable and strong partner in a coalition if she is to have value and the best shot of survival. The modern country has an advanced military industrial complex, a military with a fearsome reputation and arsenal, and despite being resource-poor has an advanced economy. Netanyahu is acutely aware of Israel’s strategic assets. Israel’s situation is not akin to that of the cluster of European nations that scrapped military spending, have a shell for a military, and under contribute to their own and collective defense.

It was Netanyahu who proposed in 1996 that the United States end its economic aid to his country. This aid was halted in 2007.25 Netanyahu has recently aired the idea that Israel should wean itself off American military aid, which was but a fraction of the country’s overall defense spending as a whole, as well.26 Indeed, the Israelis already begun boosting their own domestic military production prior to Trump’s re-election.27 Still there are ways in which America has been irreplaceable. While Israel may see India as an up-and-coming world power to align with, India does not hold veto power at the United Nations Security Council. Given the deluge of Israel-averse resolutions offered at that chamber of the United Nations, a truly friendly nation holding unilateral veto power is invaluable.

Iran Diplomacy: Shared Goals, Divergent Views

J.D. Vance, the vice president and rising figure in the Republican party, echoes Trump’s foreign policy philosophy. He is a China hawk, a critic of neoconservatism, and a realist in Middle Eastern affairs.28 In this respect, the two are not alone in the world. Dr. Schueftan also mocks what he regards as the naïve beliefs of the neoconservatives.

When a crocodile attacks, give it a banana—that’s American logic. And it's not just the left-wingers; it's also the right-wingers. Neoconservatives believed you could bring democracy to Iraq. You need a highly developed sense of humor for that. Or promoting women’s rights in Afghanistan. The foolishness is endless.29

While supportive of Israel, Vance also advocates for “smart diplomacy” with Iran to end their nuclear weapons program.30 He observed that while Israel and the United States largely share the same goals, they also have “distinct interests.”31 Trump, through his diplomatic overtures to Iran, has a similar mindset on the issue.

Netanyahu is more skeptical of a diplomatic resolution with Iran. As he observed in his memoirs:

Never mind that Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran all developed their nuclear weapons programs despite the fact that they were signatories to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], as was North Korea for seventeen years until it decided to withdraw from the treaty. Iraq and Syria were stopped by Israeli military action, Libya by the threat of American military action…If the world was relying on Iran’s signature on the NPT, we were all in deep trouble.32

As fodder to these doubts are the fact that Iran would repeatedly violate both its commitments in the NPT and in its later deal in the JCPOA.33

Indeed, Netanyahu rightly pointed out many of the glaring flaws embedded in the JCPOA that failed to “block Iran’s path to the bomb.”34 In his commentary about that deal, even he, however, conceded there was a diplomatic alternative to this “bad deal.” It was “a much better deal,” which “doesn’t leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure and such a short breakout time, that keeps restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in place until Iran’s aggression ends.” He added that such a deal might not be to the exact liking of “Israel and its neighbors” but if it blocked the pathway to a bomb, they could “live” with it.35

I think here that Trump and Vance are aiming for that “much better deal” that “Israel and its neighbors” could live with. In this respect, the aspiration for a verifiable deal that would block Iran from the bomb too is not a divorce from the relationship with Israel. It is largely complementary with Israeli interests. Though Netanyahu might further emphasize that so long as the theocratic regime in Iran ideologically dedicates36 itself to the destruction of Israel and refuses to engage with Israel as a legitimate entity, that there will be doubts about Iran’s intentions.

Conclusion

The Houthi-American truce is one that, if fully implemented, would benefit the United States. The end of the blockade would alleviate the need to police the international waterway. It would benefit Israel (and indeed the region as whole) too by allowing ships to sail freely to their ports of destination without fear of attack, while not taking away Israel’s liberty of action. The Houthi declaration of a blockade on Haifa though may undermine the first assumption. In that respect, it has yet to be determined whether the truce has fully changed the threat environment.

Any realist will understand that between states there is not always a harmony of interests. Even friendly nations can and do have divergent interests and ways of seeing the world. The American Israeli relationship has been built on pragmatic interest and broadly shared values. This truce and the administration’s attitude toward Iran may demonstrate a divergent approach to a shared problem. It has, however, yet to become an outright derailing of strategic vision and aims.