And then what?

That is the question Washington still needs to answer. What is the strategic objective behind intensifying economic pressure on Iran? Regime change? The capitulation of the current leadership? Forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program?

None of these are realistic objectives for economic pressure alone. Sanctions can inflict enormous economic pain. They can reduce Iran’s revenues and constrain the regime’s room for maneuver. But economic pain should not be confused with political capitulation. In Iran’s case, the greater the pressure becomes, especially when Tehran sees no credible diplomatic way out, the greater the risk that the regime will respond by escalating rather than surrendering.

Economic pressure is a tool, not a strategy. And a tool is only useful if it is connected to an achievable political objective. If Washington’s demands are effectively impossible for Tehran to accept, then “maximum pressure” does not create a pathway to diplomacy. It creates an escalation ladder.

If the United States genuinely wants a negotiated outcome, it will eventually have to offer Iran a realistic off-ramp: a deal in which Iranian concessions are matched by meaningful and credible economic relief.

Otherwise, more pressure will not fundamentally change the equation. It will simply make the next round of kinetic escalation increasingly difficult to avoid.

#iran

My interview with @jimsciutto @cnni:

A. The fundamental question is: What is the administration’s endgame with Iran? Right now, that remains unclear. Is the objective to weaken Iran, bring down the regime, force Tehran to capitulate, or ultimately return to negotiations and reach an agreement? These are very different objectives that require very different strategies. Until Washington defines what success actually looks like, it is difficult to understand where this conflict is heading or how it is supposed to end.

B. Economic pressure is a tool, not an objective, and certainly not an exit strategy. Without a realistic diplomatic off-ramp, maximum economic pressure is more likely to produce escalation than capitulation. The assumption that Washington can continue squeezing Tehran while indefinitely preserving the current status quo is simply unrealistic. Iran has agency in this conflict. Tehran will look for ways to impose costs on the United States and its regional partners. So even if the administration wants to freeze the conflict at its current level, Iran has no reason to accommodate that preference. Washington does not control the escalation ladder by itself.

C. Meanwhile, much of the discussion in Washington is focused on the Strait of Hormu which, we should remember, was open before the war, while the strategic problems that helped produce this conflict remain unresolved. The most important is Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, the nuclear challenge may now be more dangerous than it was before the war. Ali Khamenei was deeply hostile to the United States and Israel, but he was also extremely cautious about crossing the nuclear threshold. His removal has changed the decision-making environment in Tehran. With the IRGC now wielding greater influence, the possibility that Iran could decide to move toward a nuclear weapon has become more serious.

D.You cannot build a strategy around the assumption that the Iranian regime will collapse. That is not a strategy; it is wishful thinking. Economic pressure, even severe economic pressure, does not guarantee regime change. In fact, it could produce the opposite effect: triggering a nationalist backlash, strengthening the regime’s narrative that Iran is under external attack, and giving the leadership additional justification to crack down internally. Regime change may happen, but Washington cannot make it the central assumption on which its Iran strategy rests. U.S. policy has to be built around the Iran that exists today, not the Iran Washington hopes might emerge tomorrow.

E. For the nuclear thtrat - That creates an enormous problem for Israel. It is difficult to imagine any Israeli government simply accepting an Iranian nuclear program moving toward weaponization. So ending the current fighting without addressing the nuclear issue would not resolve the underlying conflict. It could leave Washington and Jerusalem facing an even more dangerous crisis down the road.

#IranWar‌
#iran
#thebrief

מה שהיה הוא שיהיה

הקונספציה הייתה ברורה: צריך להחליש את הרשות הפלסטינית. רשות פלסטינית חזקה פירושה כתובת מדינית וכתובת מדינית פירושה לחץ על ישראל לחזור למשא ומתן. מנגד, חמאס חזק בעזה היה התירוץ האולטימטיבי להסביר מדוע אין עם מי לדבר, ובמקביל גם הערובה לכך שהרשות הפלסטינית לא תחזור לשלוט ברצועה.

זו הייתה אחת מאבני היסוד של המדיניות הישראלית כלפי עזה במשך שנות נתניהו: לא להפיל את חמאס, לא להחזיר את הרשות, אלא לנהל את הפיצול הפלסטיני ולשמר אותו.

אבל צריך לומר ביושר: זו לא הייתה רק מדיניות נתניהו. גם "ממשלת השינוי" לא שינתה אותה באופן מהותי. היא המשיכה במדיניות שבפועל אפשרה לחמאס להתחזק, וגם בתוך המערכת המדינית והביטחונית כמעט שלא נשמע ערעור עמוק על עצם הקונספציה. לכולם היה נוח יותר לטמון את הראש בחול ולהתמקד באיראן שהיא אויב מוכר, מדינתי, רחוק, ובעיקר כזה שמולו ישראל נהנתה מתחושה עמוקה של עליונות מודיעינית ומבצעית.

אבל השאלה החשובה באמת היא אחרת: האם 7 באוקטובר גרם לישראל לשנות את הקונספציה? התשובה, למרבה הצער, היא לא.

ישראל ממשיכה להחליש את הרשות הפלסטינית מבחינה מדינית וכלכלית ומתנגדת באופן קטגורי לחזרתה לרצועת עזה. במקביל, המדיניות הישראלית בעזה — לרבות מנגנוני הכנסת הסיוע והיעדר חלופה שלטונית מוסכמת, תורמת בפועל להמשך יכולתו של חמאס לשמר את אחיזתו ברצועה.

כלומר, אותה תפיסה אסטרטגית שהתקיימה לפני 7 באוקטובר עדיין מלווה אותנו: רשות פלסטינית חלשה, התנגדות לחזרתה לעזה, היעדר אופק מדיני, ובמקביל הימנעות מבניית חלופה פלסטינית אפקטיבית לחמאס.

וזו מביאה לשאלה המטרידה מכולן: האם מי שמתיימרים להחליף את נתניהו מציעים תפיסה אחרת?

נכון לעכשיו, התשובה היא לא. אפשר לשמוע הבדלים בסגנון, בטון ובזהות המנהיג אבל קשה למצוא אצל המועמדים המרכזיים תפיסה אסטרטגית חלופית ביחס לרשות הפלסטינית, לעזה ולשאלה המדינית.

אם לא תשתנה הקונספציה, החלפת ראש הממשלה לבדה לא תשנה את המציאות.

מה שהיה הוא שיהיה.

Another indication reinforcing what should now be understood about Iran’s current strategy:

1. Iran will not accept the continuation of the status quo. Tehran is not prepared to allow Washington to maintain intense economic pressure indefinitely without imposing costs of its own on the United States.

2. Iran will not allow the Strait of Hormuz to return to normal while it remains under a maritime blockade. Tehran’s basic position is straightforward: if Iran cannot export its oil freely, it will not simply allow everyone else to do so.

3. Iran is no longer waiting to be attacked before acting. It is increasingly willing to conduct preemptive operations when it believes an American strike is imminent. What happened tonight in Jordan is another indication of this shift.

4. Tehran’s central message is economic. Iran wants Washington to understand that maintaining the current pressure campaign will impose significant costs not only on Iran, but on the global economy, and ultimately on American consumers.

5. Iranian leaders believe they can win a "contest of pain" with Washington. That calculation rests heavily on their assessment of Iran’s ability to absorb prolonged economic pressure while creating economic, military, and political costs for the United States and its partners.

6. Effective economic pressure should not be confused with successful coercion. Sanctions and the maritime blockade can hurt Iran significantly without bringing it closer to capitulation. In fact, the greater the pressure, the more likely Tehran is to intensify its own actions.

7. Jordan has become increasingly important in Iranian strategic calculations as more U.S. military assets and capabilities in the Middle East have been concentrated there. That makes Jordan a more significant potential target in a broader U.S.–Iran confrontation.

8. Iran remains willing to return to the previous memorandum of understanding, but on terms it considers acceptable. Tehran is not seeking an endless war. But neither will it refrain from using its capabilities as long as the current situation continues.

9. Iran’s decision-making process regarding the use of force has changed dramatically. The hesitation and extreme caution that previously characterized decisions involving direct friction with U.S. forces are far less evident today.

10. Iran is more proactive, more offensive, and more willing to take the initiative. Tehran still appears to operate within certain rules of the game and to calibrate escalation. But if the United States attacks Iran directly, it should be assumed that Tehran will be prepared to expand the confrontation.

11. Iran is not going to capitulate at the negotiating table. Nor should Washington expect Tehran to offer substantially greater concessions than those already discusse, including its demand for a recognized role in the future arrangements governing the Strait of Hormuz.

These are no longer simply predictions about what Iran might do. They should be the operating assumptions for anyone trying to understand Iran’s current strategy.

The crucial distinction for Washington is between hurting Iran and coercing Iran. The United States may be capable of doing the former. There is little evidence that economic and military pressure alone will produce the latter.

If U.S. strategy continues to assume that enough pressure will eventually force Tehran to surrender its core demands, Washington risks building its policy around an Iranian response that is increasingly unlikely to materialize.

#iran

This reflects a remarkable misunderstanding of how much the Gulf has changed from someone who aspires to once again become Israel’s prime minister.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are no longer living in the era of the Qatar blockade. They have moved well beyond that confrontation and today maintain a significant strategic relationship. The UAE remains more suspicious of Doha, but Bennett might want to remember who was among the first regional leaders to travel to Qatar after the Israeli strike in Doha: Mohammed bin Zayed.

Bennett seems to be analyzing today’s Gulf through the lens of the 2017–2021 Qatar crisis. A lot has changed since then.

There is another fundamental problem with his approach: Qatar is a major strategic partner of the United States. The idea that Israel can simply mobilize Washington behind a campaign to isolate Doha ignores both current Gulf geopolitics and U.S. strategic interests.

And with all due respect to Qatar’s influence operations in Washington, they are not the primary reason Israel’s standing in the United States has deteriorated. The greatest damage is being done by Israel’s own policies—above all, its approach to the Palestinians.

If Mr. Bennett genuinely wants to reverse the erosion of support for Israel in the United States, he would be better served by investing his energy in developing a realistic political strategy for the millions of Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel cannot find a technological solution to what is fundamentally a strategic and political problem.

You cannot “fix Israel” while preserving its current policies toward the Palestinians.

With all due respect to the idea of “managing the conflict”, and the belief that, even without a political solution, Palestinians can simply “live their lives”, the diplomatic, strategic, and moral costs of maintaining the status quo are already contributing to a profound erosion of Israel’s international standing.

We have tried slogans like “economic peace” and “conflict management” before. They were substitutes for strategy, based on the assumption that Israel could indefinitely avoid the political question while everything somehow remained manageable. We should have learned by now where that thinking can lead.

Without a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Israel will struggle to restore international confidence, attract the investment necessary for long-term recovery, or reverse the growing damage to its relationships abroad. Just as importantly, indefinite control over millions of Palestinians will continue to impose an enormous moral burden on Israeli society and the IDF.

What is particularly troubling is that someone aspiring to become Israel’s next prime minister does not seem to recognize where his own policies ultimately lead: toward a one-state reality.

Bennett can talk about rebuilding relations with Egypt and Jordan or expanding the Abraham Accords. But without meaningful progress on the Palestinian issue, neither Israel’s regional integration nor its international rehabilitation can reach their full potential.

Israel cannot indefinitely manage its way around the Palestinian question. Eventually, it has to answer it. Pretending otherwise is not a strategy. It is an illusion.

The gap between the Trump administration’s ambition to expand Arab-Israeli normalization and the political reality in Israel could hardly be wider.

In fact, Washington should be paying at least as much attention to Israel’s existing peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan as it does to expanding the Abraham Accords. If the trajectory of Israeli policy continues, preserving those relationships may become a more urgent challenge than adding new countries to the normalization framework.

Look at the Israeli political landscape. Virtually no major candidate for prime minister is advocating a two-state solution. Some political forces increasingly describe Palestinian “immigration” as a legitimate solution, while other mainstream leaders are often reluctant to confront such rhetoric directly. Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister portrays Mahmoud Abbas as an enemy, while the IDF struggle to maintain control in places such as Qusra.

This is the political environment in which Washington hopes to persuade Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to normalize relations with Israel.

The contradiction should be obvious. Normalization cannot be separated indefinitely from the Palestinian issue. Arab governments have their own strategic interests in relations with Israel, but there are political limits to how far they can move while Israeli policy appears to be moving further away from any credible political horizon for the Palestinians.

Under these circumstances, expecting a major expansion of the Abraham Accords without a fundamental change in Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is about as realistic as expecting sanctions alone to bring down the Iranian regime.

Washington can develop ambitious regional architecture. But it cannot build that architecture around a political reality that does not exist.

Main takeaways from my interview @NewsNation :

A. Economic pressure is working, but pressure is a tool, not a strategy. Sanctions are clearly hurting Iran, and the maritime blockade is having an even greater impact. But the fundamental question remains unanswered: What is the administration actually trying to achieve? Is the objective to force Iran into submission, or to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table? Without a clearly defined end state, pressure alone is unlikely to produce a sustainable outcome. And Iran does not appear to have a Plan B: as the pressure intensifies, the regime is more likely to escalate than capitulate.

B. Washington needs to go back to the drawing board. U.S. strategy toward Iran should be reassessed based on what we have learned from the war. Arming opposition groups or pursuing other regime-change-oriented ideas is unlikely to fundamentally alter the balance inside Iran. The regime has demonstrated its resilience and, in some respects, has emerged more hardened and more willing to use force.

C. Six months after the war began on February 28, none of its core strategic objectives has been achieved. There have certainly been operational successes, including progress in moving oil through the Strait of Hormuz. But operational achievements should not be confused with strategic success. On the fundamental issues that triggered the confrontation, the strategic picture remains largely unresolved.

D. The most important question is still the simplest one: What does the administration want to achieve against Iran? Until Washington defines a realistic and achievable end state, it will be extremely difficult to build a coherent strategy or even to assess whether the current campaign is succeeding. Right now, that strategy remains unclear.

E.There is no kinetic silver bullet for the Iran problem. Despite months of military operations, neither the nuclear challenge nor Iran’s conventional military buildup has been resolved. Military force can degrade capabilities and buy time, but it cannot substitute for a strategy that addresses the underlying problems. The key question remains: what is the achievable political emd state?

F. Iran will not hesitate to escalate, and it will not capitulate. The more pressure Washington applies without offering a credible diplomatic off-ramp, the more likely Tehran is to respond with kinetic escalation, not concessions. Any strategy built on the assumption that enough economic pain will eventually force Iran to surrender fundamentally misunderstands how the regime operates.

#IranWar‌
#iran

It does not matter how many threats come from CENTCOM or the White House, or how many limited military actions Washington takes: Iran will not accept a situation in which it cannot export its own oil while tankers continue moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

This is the fundamental problem with the current U.S. approach. Repeated threats have had little effect on Iranian behavior. In fact, when the U.S. president warns Tehran of devastating consequences if it continues attacking tankers, or, even more seriously, U.S. forces, and those warnings are followed by either no response or only limited strikes, Tehran is likely to conclude that American deterrence is eroding, not strengthening.

Washington is therefore caught in an escalation trap of its own making. It does not want a broader war with Iran, but it also feels compelled to respond when Iran attacks. Yet a major U.S. response risks triggering another round of Iranian escalation, while a limited response is unlikely to deter Tehran from continuing its attacks.

That is precisely why Washington needs to reconsider its broader strategy toward Iran. Tactical military successes cannot resolve a fundamentally strategic problem. As long as Tehran believes the status quo is intolerable and Washington offers no viable diplomatic off-ramp, Iran will continue trying to change that status quo through force.

Under these conditions, the next round of escalation is not a remote possibility. It is increasingly only a matter of time.

#IranWar‌

בדיוק בגלל הצהרות חסרות היתכנות וחסרות כיסוי מהסוג הזה כתבתי את המאמר @Haaretz

אין השתלבות ישראלית ב-IMEC בלי התקדמות משמעותית בסוגיה הפלסטינית. בפעם האחרונה שבדקתי, סעודיה היא חלק בלתי נפרד מהפרויקט הזה — ולריאד אין שום כוונה להעניק לישראל את הפרס האסטרטגי של נורמליזציה ואינטגרציה אזורית בלי מהלכים מדיניים משמעותיים מול הפלסטינים.

צריך להפסיק למכור לציבור הישראלי אשליות. אין אינטגרציה אזורית אמיתית כל עוד ישראל ממשיכה במדיניותה הנוכחית. אי אפשר לטמון את הראש בחול בכל הנוגע לסוגיה הפלסטינית, להתעלם מהמציאות הפוליטית באזור, ובמקביל לצפות ש-IMEC, נורמליזציה עם סעודיה ושילובה של ישראל במרחב פשוט יסתדרו מעצמם.

הדרך לאינטגרציה אזורית לא עוקפת את הסוגיה הפלסטינית. היא עוברת דרכה.

haaretz.co.il/opinions/2026-…

The more effective the economic pressure on Iran becomes, the greater the risk that Tehran will escalate kinetically.

That is the paradox administration needs to understand. Iran’s leadership has no intention of capitulating under economic pressure. Instead, it sees its remaining military capabilities, particularly its ability to disrupt maritime traffic, as its most important source of leverage for forcing the United States to ease the naval blockade.

So we should be very careful about celebrating Iran’s growing economic distress as evidence that the strategy is “working.” Economic pain does not automatically translate into political concessions.

In the current Iranian calculus, the opposite may be true: the greater the economic pressure, the stronger the incentive to impose costs on the United States and the global economy.

The events of the past few days should serve as a warning. If Washington increases economic pressure without providing a credible diplomatic off-ramp, it should prepare for more Iranian escalation, not Iranian capitulation.

This leads to an uncomfortable question: If the administration genuinely wants to avoid being dragged back into a broader military confrontation with Iran, it needs to ask whether further intensifying economic pressure actually serves that objective.

#IranWar‌
#iran

Quoted @observer:

recent attacks that exemplify Tehran’s emerging military doctrine under the rule of the late Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, and his hardline backers in the IRGC.

This regime is now highly controlled by the IRGC and wants to use its capabilities. Mojtaba Khamenei is definitely more radical than his father, and so we are seeing this more aggressive behaviour.

Iran’s willingness to block the strait, and its attempt to rapidly rebuild its missile and drone capabilities, as part of a broader effort to raise the cost of the war for the US and control the pace of conflict to its advantage.

Tehran’s newfound willingness to go on the offensive fits within this strategy. They are not lunatics; in their minds, this is the rational thing to do in order to build deterrence… to ensure no one is willing to attack them in future. That’s why this is a doctrinal change, not just a tactical one for the coming days.

@msrmichaelson

observer.co.uk/news/internati…
https://t.co/OqquXi4Yzb