The fog of war is thick over the current hostilities between Israel and Iran, but the intense interest in short-term outcomes of this regional war may be obscuring the ultimate prospects for Israel as negative trends undermine its militaristic foreign policy. I will describe these trends and the likely outcome.
Loss of International Support
The cruel irony of a state born out of the holocaust of the European Jews ruthlessly inflicting death and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza is turning world opinion against Israel. The vast destruction and indiscriminate killing in Gaza has indelibly stained Israel’s reputation. Surveys indicate substantial worldwide deterioration of support for Israel. Public outrage is translating into diminished political support from governments. Votes against Israel in the UN are increasingly lopsided, with only the U.S. Security Council veto sparing Israel from adverse SC resolutions. While the majority of Israelis continue to support the brutal destruction of Gaza, Israeli leaders stand accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Gaza destroyed – The whole world is watching
As international opinion turns against Israel, the pressure for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) will grow, likely following a scenario similar to the economic campaign against the South African apartheid regime.
Internal Political Divisions
Although the current hostilities have rallied Israelis behind the government, Israeli society is sharply divided along multiple lines that shape its politics and national identity. Key divisions include:
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Ideological: A dominant right-wing bloc favors nationalism, settlements, and judicial limits, while a weaker left-wing supports civil liberties and a two-state solution.
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Religious: Secular Jews clash with religious and ultra-Orthodox communities over military service, education, and the role of Jewish law in public life.
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Ethnic: Ashkenazi Jews (European descent) and Mizrahi Jews (Middle Eastern/North African descent) differ historically in status and voting patterns.
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Jewish-Arab: Arab citizens face systemic inequality and are often excluded from national identity and governance debates.
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Judicial Crisis: Deep polarization emerged over judicial reform, with mass protests defending democratic institutions.
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Geographic: Urban centers lean liberal; peripheral towns and settlements are more conservative and religious.
These divisions contribute to political instability, fragmented coalitions, and growing tensions over Israel’s democratic and Jewish character. As strategic consensus erodes and public trust in leadership falters, especially among reservists and young secular Israelis, Israel’s willingness to use force may become more selective, contested, or politically risky.
Before the attack on Iran, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition was teetering on the edge of collapse over the issue of conscription of Orthodox religious men. Massive demonstrations have regularly occurred opposing the government’s legislative attempts to limit the powers of Israel’s judiciary, and there have also been continuing large demonstrations against the fighting in Gaza. Many reservists have refused orders to return to duty because of their opposition to the conduct of the Gaza war. Thus, it is likely that the turbulent conditions in Israeli domestic politics will worsen in the future.
Shifting Military Power Balance
Military power depends on economic power. The Islamic nations of the Mideast are collectively much richer in natural and human resources than Israel. This disparity will persist and grow in future decades, irrespective of political divisions and frictions among the Islamic nations. The growing wealth of Israel’s adversaries will likely enable the development of arsenals of advanced weaponry capable of overwhelming Israel’s defenses.
Military analysts have written extensively about the superior performance of Israel in wars against its neighbors (e.g., Why Arabs Lose Wars), and they attribute much of this advantage to human factors, such as training, unit cohesion, and patriotic fervor. However, as weaponry becomes more sophisticated, human factors diminish as a determinant of victory. The current long-range fighting between Israel and Iran involves no maneuvering or close combat of soldiers. It is a battle between offensive and defensive missiles and aircraft.
It is instructive to consider the history of the wars fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the context of the conflicts between Israel and its neighbors. Like the Jews of Israel, the Armenians were victims of a holocaust, have a large diaspora, and sought to recover ancient lands from an Islamic neighbor. Armenia was victorious in a war fought from 1988 to 1994 and took the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Azerbaijan, despite Azerbaijan having twice the population and GDP. Ten years later, in 2023, Azerbaijan defeated Armenia using a new arsenal of advanced weapons, including Turkish drones, and recovered Nagorno-Karabakh. The lesson is that a nation with qualitatively superior military personnel can be defeated by an adversary with quantitatively and qualitatively superior weaponry.
Iran has already demonstrated the ability of its hypersonic missiles to penetrate the best Israeli missile defenses. In a numbers game pitting attacking against defending missiles, the larger and better arsenal wins. In the future, Israel will likely face steadily growing numbers of offensive missiles in Turkiye, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and again in Iran. The greater wealth of Israel’s regional adversaries will eventually translate into large arsenals of smart weapons that offset Israel’s personnel quality advantages.
U.S. Imperial Decline
The size and scope of the U.S. military establishment is no longer easily sustainable by the U.S. economy. Annual interest on the U.S. debt now exceeds the size of the defense budget, and domestic political pressure is growing to curb U.S. overseas military commitments. Meanwhile, the U.S. is faced with a challenges from China’s rapidly expanding military capabilities and Russia’s reassertion of military power in Ukraine. These economic and geopolitical factors will increasingly limit the resources available to support Israel.
Apart from economic and political constraints, the increasing internal dysfunction of the U.S. military-industrial-complex is causing a steady decline in military capability. The U.S. is falling behind its rivals in the areas of hypersonic missiles, drone warfare, and naval shipbuilding. Defense projects are often poorly conceived, exceed budgets, and miss schedule milestones. The misaligned incentives of defense contractors and normalized corruption of procurement officials is seriously weakening the U.S. military. The U.S. failure to prevail against insurgents in Afghanistan and the growing evidence of a failed proxy war against Russia in Ukraine indicate the diminishing ability of the U.S. military to accomplish strategic objectives. These trends call into question how much longer Israel can expect sufficient military support from the U.S.
Conclusion
The U.S. may intervene to enable Israel to win the current war against Iran and compel Iran to accept harsh restrictions on its nuclear program and military capabilities. This will not alter the economic, military, and political trends working against Israel’s current political model of a militarized ethno-state. As the global power of the U.S. declines, its ability to support its main outpost in the Mideast will wane. This, together with internal political pressures, increasing international economic sanctions, and the growing costs of permanent regional military confrontation will result in Israel ultimately becoming a largely secular democratic nation at peace with its neighbors. This outcome for Israel may be delayed for many years, but I believe it to be inevitable. Israel cannot long persist in behaving like a ruthless warring kingdom of the biblical era.
Those turkiye support numbers are pretty high, one wonders how Erdogan gets away with his rampant double dealing.
My understanding from everyone Turkish I know is it’s down to political divisions, very similar to the US and Trump actually. You have:
1. “Own the libs” types that really despise the CHP (not always without justification)
2. People that still trust Türkiye’s overall trajectory under the AKP and are suspicious of color-revolution-level changes (also not without justification)
3. A core of die-hard AKP supporters that will use wild 5D-chess theories to rationalize anything Erdoğan does (just like Always-Trumpers in the US)
4. A huge chunk of sensible people that don’t like any of their options or feel anything changes so they tune out. Even if they vote or protest now and then, there’s nothing for sustained pushback to crystallize around (the İmamoğlu protests have maybe been the closest thing since Gezi park years ago)
As a self fulfilling prophecy (Trump told NBC on Sunday that if the Iranian regime did not “make a deal” with the White House, “there will be bombing.”. . . “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” the president said.), 21st century Orwellian peace, full spectrum dominance, and trillion dollar ‘defense’ budgets means quite literally that “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia” and that according to the geo-strategic imperial dogmatists, Brzezinski’s barbarians must be ultimately prevented from coming together through forever ‘wars of colonialism in a post-colonial age’.
Trump said the same before he sent the USN to lose 3 F-18 and spend two months doing nothing to the Houthi.
The U.S. planes flying out of Prince Sultan, KSA, and maybe a few NATO bases in Turkiye will pound apartment buildings and hospitals but have no impact on Iran.
So much winning.
Some population figures, just to put Israel’s demographic footprint into perspective:
1973
Israel 3.8m
Egypt 37m
Turkey 39m
Iran 32m
Saudi Arabia 6m
2025
Israel 9.5m
Egypt 118m
Turkey 88m
Iran 92m
Saudi Arabia 35m
Israel is hopelessly outnumbered. Population isn’t everything, but the human factor matters: and as Stalin allegedly said, quantity has a quality of its own. Israeli hi-tech has its limitations, and some of these countries — Iran and Turkey in particular — have impressive industrial and technical abilities. As for natural resources, I rest my case.
In the long run, Israel is doomed. Whether this ongoing Iranian adventure delays or hastens its demise remains to be seen.
They are doomed if they refuse to make peace and it is US support that enables their leaders to do that. They are also doomed if their population starts leaving, no doubt the reason Netanyahu is trying to prevent it.
At that point Israelis will discover that all those walls that were built to keep Arabs in with their mines and machine gun towers now mean that they can’t get out. But with a Netanyau government I have no doubt that wealthy people will be able to leave aboard private jets – after making the appropriate donations.
This is a strangely optimistic projection neglecting the very real possibility that Kissenger’s 2012 prediction was only a bit late. Think a nasty kink in that yellow growth curves is coming for Israel.
I don’t think it’s true to say that human factors become less important as technology improves: experience suggests the opposite, because the more sophisticated the weapons, the higher level of training needed, and the more complex becomes the integration of the various weapon systems. Thus, the gap you are talking about is likely to increase. “Human factors” in the sense you mean, and which have been extensively studied in the case of Arab armies, not only include training standards (of which literacy and numeracy are important parts) but issues of command and control and the ability to manoeuvre large forces. The lack of this capability is why the Iraqi army was so easily defeated in 1990: units did not receive orders, and commanders, trained in a rigid Soviet-style centralised system, therefore did nothing. It’s also true that in many Arab armies regime preservation is the top priority, and key commands are given to the politically trustworthy. For example, Assad’s younger brother was the Commander of the elite 4th Armoured Division.
Of course, to the extent that wars are fought at long range with missiles, then very large stocks of even moderately good missiles can overwhelm even quite sophisticated defences by sheer weight of numbers, just as they can force foreign warships away from coasts. But missiles can’t take and hold ground, nor can they expel invaders. And even highly accurate missiles are no good unless you have sophisticated targeting and ISR systems. So far, Iranian missiles have not demonstrated much precision. Whether that’s because they haven’t used their best stuff, or whether it’s because they simply don’t have the detailed targeting information remains to be seen. And of course as Ukraine has shown, drones can hunt and destroy missile systems before they can launch.
You must be watching different news feed than I am. The strikes have been so accurate Israel has actually banned publishing any images or video about them. They are actually giving a tit for that – Israel hits gas processing station and Iran hits oil refinery, Israel hits Iranian central broadcasting building and Iran hits Israels, and so on and on.
And Iraqi officers were mostly trained in UK, the favorite of most African and Arabic countries. Just considering the relative sizes of war games played, one is led to believe that students of Frunze got some hands-on training in moving divisions around, while in Sandhurst they’d be lucky to command a company. It may also bear mentioning that the actual Soviet doctrine of “deep penetration” and the very high tempo it requires only works if the formations act independently of the command and the communication is minimal. And thus Soviet Army was trained.
Could war with Iran be the empire’s Waterloo? The (in)famous Millennium Challenge 2002 war games offer that as a possibility. One could hope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
well…one can hope…and cringe…and be horrified by the blowback that will hit us all…all at the same time.
thats where im at.
the end of americas experiments with imperialism was never gonna be pretty.
it was always going to happen, somehow…this is just how its happening, now.
hence the ai and deepfakes and wall to wall propaganda(rachel maddow sounds just like the broadcasters in V for Vendetta)
therefore, i am drinking cousin’s beer, fixin to finish that hogleg, reveling in this gloriously beautiful day here in the texas hill country…and watching 3 kittens wrestle all around and inside an empty beer box.
I heard somebody in a video talk about war-gaming – maybe Ritter or MacGregor – and they said that the one for Iran played out for over a decade with indeterminate results. And this was before the US had mostly shipped their weapons to the Ukraine and Israel. So is Trump gong to threaten Iran with nukes unless they surrender?
“Geographic: Urban centers lean liberal; peripheral towns and settlements are more conservative and religious.”
The urban/rural divide and property bubbles of various sorts (keeping in mind that countries getting bombed could end up more rubble than bubble)…something in common globally.
The conclusion reads like an analysis of French Algeria in 1960; those difficult pieds noir were going to come around to democratic relations with their Arab neighbors.
By ‘63 it was le cercueil ou la valise…
I guess that U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee has come up with a hellfire alternative: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114698784693311065
Israel wasn’t “born out of the Holocaust” although of course that’s the version that the Israelis like to tell. It was born out of the Balfour declaration and British imperialism’s desire to colonize Palestine with Europeans. Before that Zionism had considered other locations for a Jewish state including in Africa and Argentina. As I was reading, I believe from an article from these pages, just the other day the early Israelis preferred not to talk about the killing of Europe’s Jews and were even ashamed of it.
According to this account Holocaust awareness only really took off in the 1960s and as Israeli socialism gave way to Likud in the 70s and 80s the jusitification for increasing intransigence re the Palestinians became by pointing to what Germany had done to the Jews. Blame it all on the Mufti of Jerusalem to provide some tenuous connection to the Nazis.
Which is to say that this particular project has always floated on a vast body of perception shaping to distract from what was essentially a throwback to 19th century colonialism.
If Israel is headed for some sort of tragedy then it will be the tragedy of not telling the truth. Contra Golda Meir there is such a thing as the Palestinians and reconciliation is the only way out.
Here’s hoping Trump doesn’t make it a world tragedy. He’s not very bright, something Netanyahu has been counting on.
And btw a new poll says that if Trump does take the country to war against Iran then he will be defying not only his campaign promises and his base but the desire of the country’s voters in general, 60 percent of whom oppose this
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-israel-war-2672386204/
Defying the public on war sounds like dictatorship to me.
And it’s been the actual form of US governance since the Dulles Brothers Inc took over FDR’s aberrant Democratic Party in 1944. Empires bend readily to this course.
“…there have also been continuing large demonstrations against the fighting in Gaza.”
I thought those were against not getting the hostages out first (and then continue the genocide). All the polls I have seen suggest 90+% of Israeli’s support the genocide or think the IDF should kill the arabs faster.
Rest of the analysis is spot on, which is much worse due to diffsuion of technology from China, like drones, to the global south
I am irritated whenever I read or hear the widely held idea that military power is a simple function of economic power. War has more dimensions than merely economic. This is obvious to anyone who has a bit more than a mere inkling of history. Think of the conquest of China by Mongol herders under strong, unifying leadership or in recent times look at the Korean, Vietnam, and Yemeni wars as examples. In the current Israeli-Iran conflict, note how cheaply Israeli allied forces within Iran neutralised Iran’s sophisticated air defence system by applying the drone war lessons in Ukraine. Economics is vital to the prosecution of successful wars but it is not the be all and end all of military power.
Meanwhile in the shelters Israelis are anything but nonchalant
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/6/17/the-shelter-was-full-israelis-confront-unprecedented-missile-barrages
More. Shelter discrimination.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/17/israel-iran-conflict-list-of-key-events-june-17-2025
I agree but with two points:
1) It is not that human factors become unimportant. Rather a different set of human factors will become critical. The prime example today is how Iran’s investment in technology and education made it a peer competitor to Israel’s vaunted technological prowess.
2) Israel is likely to become a rump state inhabited mostly by religious fanatics. As such it will resemble the many religious communities bordering the Easter Mediterranean, communities like Maronites, Alawites, Druze, etc. Ashkenazim will flee to the West to live in white Western countries like Canada and Australia.
Quote of the day
“When clown moves into palace, he does not become a king, the palace becomes a circus.”