Every modern apartment in Israel comes with a safe room hardened to survive a missile or rocket hit. In 2022 I moved to Jerusalem, bought an apartment, and placed my library in the safe room. Thus, I had plenty of resources to consult in the safe room during the recent Iranian missile attacks. Here are some forward-looking thoughts.
For Israel – Listen to Moshe Dayan, Focus on Syria, Avoid the American Bear Hug
In the immediate aftermath of war, with the American media mired in a semantic debate with the Trump administration over how to describe the extent of destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites, Israelis focused on operational outcomes. Their media reported this assessment: the Islamic Republic of Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state; its nuclear program is set back for years. Israel’s precision strikes, and the American coups de grâce on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, achieved their missions.
As a result of 12 days of strikes on Iran, and the preceding 18 months of war on Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis and other internationally designated terror groups, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has made the Middle East a much more secure and stable place. For Netanyahu skeptics and haters, perhaps it’s finally time to recognize why the Israeli public consistently returns him to office to protect the country and run the government. Credit also belongs to the intelligence collection and mission planning and execution by both the Israeli Air Force and the Mossad.
In addition, as my Shalem College Daniel Polisar has written, we should recognize the true heroes of this war: average Israelis who serve in the reserves and support the country on the home front. All but one of the 29 killed in Israel from Iranian missiles was a civilian (one was a soldier on leave, killed at his home in Beersheva with his mother and girlfriend in the final Iranian salvo minutes before the ceasefire). The Israeli public – left, right and center, including large segments of the Israeli Arab minority (four of whom were killed by Iranian missiles) – see this war as necessary. Their resilience and stoicism gave the Israel Defense Forces and security services the time needed to complete their missions.
And yet, as Israel resumes daily life, one should remember the advice of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan after the Six-Day War of June 1967. He reminded students at Haifa’s Technion University, in November 1967, that the ultimate goal was not military victory but political settlement with the neighbors (including the Palestinians). Don’t think, he told Technion students, that a crushing military defeat brings the enemy closer to the negotiation table. We have more work to do, prophesied Dayan.
Israel and the US are seeking to capitalize on their recent military victory by negotiating political agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Syria might be the surprise likeliest candidate.
Syria’s new government needs urgent international assistance to rebuild after 14 years of civil war and international sanctions. Its new ruler, Ahmed al-Shara’a, was one of the few Arab leaders to refrain from rhetorical criticism of Israel during the war with Iran. Iran of course had been the major foreign power, along with Russia, supporting the oppressive Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Asad, which al-Shara’a and his Sunni Arab militia had overthrown. Al-Shara’a has vowed not to allow Iran and its proxies back into Syria.
The Middle East has a way of reconciling strange bedfellows. Anwar al-Sadat was imprisoned as a Nazi spy in Cairo during World War II. He penned some of the bloodiest antisemitic tirades to appear in the Egyptian press of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, when it was in his interest as ruler of an impoverished Egypt to make peace with Israel and unlock American aid, Sadat in 1977 flew to Israel and addressed the Knesset.
Will Ahmed al-Shara’a – former al-Qa’ida terrorist imprisoned by the Americans in Iraq, who took the nom de guerre “Abu Muhammad al-Jolani” apparently out of desire to reclaim the Golan Heights – pull a Sadat to Jerusalem? Not in the near term. Preceding Sadat’s speech in Jerusalem were four years of talks, mediated by Kissinger, leading to two disengagement engagements in Sinai between Egypt and Israel, and secret diplomacy conducted by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan with Egyptian counterparts (and hosted by the King of Morocco).
In short, what’s needed are some confidence-building interim steps between Syria and Israel that might eventually lead to a full normalization agreement. For generations the government-controlled media in Syria has inundated its public with hatred of Israel. The new government – if indeed it is interested in moving forward with Israel – would be wise to take interim steps to prepare its public for a major change towards its neighbor, “the Zionist entity.”
As for Saudi Arabia – Israel normalization, the Saudis say that will require some significant steps towards a Palestinian state, which in turn would require institution-building by Palestinians, as well as Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Institution-building is needed to prevent another failed state on Israel’s borders, but it will take time and we shouldn’t rush to have another signing ceremony if the conditions are not ripe. The Saudi public will also need signals from its government that a change is coming on Israel, perhaps best done through private sector Saudi-Israeli business deals.
Israelis are naturally very happy with the decision of President Trump to call in the B-2 bombers to end the Iran campaign. Yet, an unhappy aspect of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s legacy is a level of dependence on the United States that would have alarmed his great predecessors David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. One question I had, sitting in the safe room waiting for the American B-2s, is why Israel itself doesn’t have heavy bombers, only fighter-bombers. The “massive ordinance penetrator” bomb that only a heavy bomber like the B-2 can deliver is surely within Israel’s technical competence.
One answer for Israel’s lack of heavy bombers was supplied by Israel’s former ambassador to the US Michael Oren: under President Obama Israel asked for them but the US denied Israel that weapon. I can confirm, as a participant in mil-mil meetings in that period, that Oren is correct. The US policy during the Obama administration was to hold Israel in a “bear hug” as a way of managing Netanyahu’s ability to mount an independent strike on Iran which, according to Obama National Security Council experts, would draw the US into a protracted regional war. Instead, we would provide a guaranteed stream of military hardware and determine what Israel could get and what it could do with it. Heavy bombers? You don’t need that, we’ll take care of it when needed, was the US response.
The US-Israel relationship will be made healthier by reducing Israel’s reliance on the US. That will require Israel to grow its economy so that it can independently produce or procure the weapons systems needed to defend the country. That should be a medium-term goal over the next five years, achieved mainly through structural reforms of the economy. The single top priority on this reform agenda is to more fully integrate into the labor force two underrepresented groups – ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and Israeli Arab women.
It would also help to require the government to produce an interagency national security strategy that identifies solutions to threats. Strategic planning is currently handled by the defense ministry and the IDF, which failed to accurately assess threats from Hamas. These are lessons learned from both October 2023 and June 2025. The Israeli government that emerges from elections in 2026 should have the requisite popular support to undertake these and other reforms.
About Iran – Learn More, Don’t Rely on Expatriates
The 12-day war reinforced my impression of how little we in the West know about Iran. In some other big foreign societies like Russia, China or Egypt, the US has been able to keep cultural and academic ties and exchanges of diplomats. As a result, we have multiple sources of information about these places to turn to in times of crisis. We have lacked those kinds of ties with Iran for decades. The Islamic Republic started by taking our diplomats hostage and now does that with any American visitors, including Iranian Americans. The US Government should invest more in Persian language training and Iran country knowledge among its analysts.
The war also reinforced my doubts about reliance on expatriates as sources of information and influence on their former homeland. We should have learned that lesson from the disastrous reliance on Ahmed Chalabi and his expatriate network for what was happening in Iran’s neighbor, Iraq. There are many outstanding individual Iranian Americans in the West, including prominent academics and think tankers, but few insights were forthcoming from them into what the compatriots were thinking during this crisis.
There is no sign of large-scale popular unrest with the clerical regime or visible, organized national-level opposition. We know there is widespread dissatisfaction and economic hardship. Iranians with resources are emigrating. During the Green Movement protests of June 2009, and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022, the Iranian security forces were ordered to shoot into the crowds and they did so (unlike Egypt’s Tahrir Square protests of 2011 when the regime didn’t order the security forces to fire into the crowds, perhaps because the Egyptian forces would not have complied). Has the regime’s demonstrated willingness to use deadly force effectively deterred Iranians from protesting? We simply don’t know.
Israel’s utter humiliation of Iran in 12 days of war has ended, for now. The US and its allies have an unprecedented opportunity to draw a new map of regional ties based on alignment with the West. Let’s see if the US and its allies have the ability to turn this military victory into a lasting political settlement.
