Senior Israeli officials who endorse a nuclear deal with Iran are undermining Israel’s interests. Without an agreement, Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear threshold state will be from a position of weakness, while Israel and the US will have legitimacy, urgency, and targets with which to inflict critical harm.
"This is part of an Iranian strategic calculation to turn Syria into another zone of activity for Palestinian terror organizations," says Michael Barak, a senior researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.
While the American president's political reputation in polls continues to drop lower and lower, the US President embarks on a Middle East tour. Under the guise of an attempt to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Biden is actually striving to improve his situation on his home front.
The cooperation between Israel and Turkey that torpedoed an Iranian plan to kill Israelis in Istanbul was unusual and commendable, but Iran is more determined than ever to make Israel pay.
The US president plans to form a regional defense alliance at a regional conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
In a region where the words "honor" and "power" are key, repeatedly spitting in Iran's face will inevitably incur a response, but Israel has no choice.
Analysts say Erdogan is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to push his own agenda in Syria, but an incursion by Ankara would be risky, threatening to upset its ties with both the United States and Russia.
Tehran’s strategy is to surround the Jewish state with as many “fire bases” as it can – from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, and in the future, from the West Bank, as well as from Iran itself.
Canceling the contentious Jerusalem Day event or changing the route would have projected weakness.
"Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is saying, 'If you push me too hard, you will get Netanyahu.' Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is saying, 'If you push me too hard, you will get Hamas.' It is full of contradictions,” said Professor Eytan Gilboa, an expert on US-Israel relations.
