Shmuel Rosner is an Israeli columnist, editor, and researcher. He is the editor of the research and data-journalism website themadad.com, and is the political editor of the Jewish Journal.
The war against two stubborn enemies, such as Iran and Hezbollah, has an interesting lesson to teach on obstacles created by regimes that are polar opposites.
Whoever risks a decisive or semi-decisive prediction of the campaign’s end (and there is a long list of such figures on the Israeli side as well as the American side) is not demonstrating wisdom but rather a lack of seriousness.
Think about the cat that battled the elephant. It obviously cannot win, but if it survived the battle against the elephant with tolerable damage, it can certainly feel satisfied.
Will the war against Iran turn from a one-time, life-saving surgical operation into ongoing treatment for a chronic disease?
American malaise involves gloomy thoughts about spiking gas prices, or depressing flashbacks to previous wars where days stretched into decades. Israeli malaise is accompanied by gloomy thoughts about the Americans.
As Israel is learning in Gaza, achieving regime change from the outside, without a commitment to deep and continuous involvement, is a difficult task.
A regime change in Iran is the holy grail of all outcomes. But what a regime change entails and how such an event could be encouraged is not easy to tell.
Israel’s 2026 election will not be decided by the shouting matches on television or the megaphones at protests. It will be decided by a quieter group, one large enough to swing a dozen seats yet ideologically flexible enough to be wooed by competing camps.
The elections of 2026 will not be “right vs. center-left.” They will be “right vs. right.”
Debates about the West’s collapse will remain muddled until we admit what we are really debating: not the fate of a civilization, but the meaning of its name.