Iran stands at an inflection point. The Iranian people have risen up with extraordinary courage and on an unprecedented scale to demand a better future. The ayatollah regime has responded with lethal repression.

But the regime’s brutality cannot hide the fact that it has no answer to the forces driving the unrest: economic collapse, failure to provide basic services, and a society that increasingly rejects the regime’s ideology in favor of freedom, dignity, and human rights.

A new Iranian government that ends the export of terror, ceases its ambition for military nuclear power, and chooses constructive relations with the West rather than allying itself with America’s enemies would be one of the most consequential developments for Middle East and the global order in modern history.

President Donald Trump’s urging of Iranians to keep protesting, promising that “help is on its way,” while signaling that the United States is prepared to sustain and escalate pressure stands in stark contrast to the approach of recent administrations.

In 2009, Iranians filled the streets in the Green Movement with a simple question—“Where is my vote?”—and the regime answered with brutality.

Prioritizing a nuclear deal with the regime over the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations, the Obama administration all but ignored the protestors. In 2022, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement revealed once again the courage of Iran’s youth and women, but the regime survived through violence and fear, emboldened by Western inaction.

Today, however, Iran’s rulers face a new reality. Trump has restored American power and standing on the international stage. Internally, the country is gripped by skyrocketing inflation, deep corruption, and a catastrophic water crisis—problems driven by the regime’s mismanagement, its refusal to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and its determination to send billions of dollars to terror proxies abroad rather than invest in Iran’s own people.

Externally, the Islamic Republic’s moment of maximum regional power has passed. On Oct. 6, 2023, Tehran’s terror proxy network threatened Israel, destabilized Lebanon, endangered U.S. partners in the Gulf, and menaced global shipping lanes.

In the war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, Israel, with U.S. support, dealt devastating blows to Hamas and Hezbollah. American and Israeli strikes severely degraded the Houthis’ ability to threaten shipping and regional partners.

And the 12-day war, culminating in Operation Midnight Hammer, did not just destroy much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and ballistic missile arsenal, but dismantled key elements of Iran’s air defenses, leaving the regime in a state of heightened vulnerability.

In other words, the ayatollah emperor has been revealed to have no clothes. Yet even as the regime’s weakness is exposed and the people’s desire for change is unmistakable, the most important question remains unanswered: What comes next?

The best available data regarding the preferences of the Iranian people comes from the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran. Its June 2024 survey, based on anonymous responses from more than 77,000 respondents, found that 70% of Iranians explicitly oppose the Islamic Republic. An extraordinary 89% say they support a democratic system. Two-thirds reject governance based on religious law.

On the preferred alternative, Iranians are not unified around a single blueprint: about 26% favor a secular republic and around 21% support a constitutional monarchy. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, remains the most popular opposition figure listed, enjoying 31% support, but no figure is favored by a majority.

This mix of deep anti-theocratic sentiment, strong democratic aspirations, and fragmented opposition means both hope and risk. The hope is obvious. The risk is that a powerful force, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or elements of the military, could attempt to capture the state in the name of stability.

Still, if Iran’s future is a government that chooses normal relations with the world rather than theological extremism and revolutionary export, the strategic benefits for the United States could be historic.

First, such a shift could permanently extinguish Iran’s “ring of fire.” Tehran is the banker, trainer, and armorer of the region’s most destabilizing terror networks. A post–Islamic Republic Iran could reduce the threat to U.S. forces and allies, restore confidence in global shipping routes, and open the door to news regional integration architectures.

Second, it would strike a major blow to Russia. Today’s Iran is one of Moscow’s most important partners, supporting sanctions evasion and enabling Russia’s war machine. A new Iranian government seeking Western investment and sanctions relief would have strong incentives to sever that relationship.

Third, it would disrupt China’s strategic foothold in the region. Beijing has benefited from Iran’s isolation, importing discounted Iranian energy and using Tehran as an anti-American anchor in the Middle East. A normalized Iran, trading broadly and transparently, would reduce China’s leverage.

None of this will happen automatically. That is why America’s policy should be guided by a simple principle: support the Iranian people, deter mass repression, and prepare for multiple transition scenarios.

That means enabling communications and internet access during blackouts, documenting and sanctioning perpetrators of atrocities, and making clear that sanctions relief is available only in exchange for verifiable changes—ending terror exports, accepting robust nuclear and ballistic missile constraints, and respecting fundamental rights.

If the regime continues its brutal repression, a U.S.-led military response should follow.

The U.S. has the capabilities to deal a devastating blow to the regime, while protecting American assets and personnel. Under Trump’s leadership, the U.S. now has an opportunity to stand with the Iranian people and to shape a more stable and peaceful future for the Middle East and the entire world.

The article was co-written with Daniel Flesch, a Senior Policy Analyst for Middle East and North Africa at The Heritage Foundation.

Published in The Daily Signal, January  16, 2026.

Highlights

The fields of water, food and healthcare offer a strategic opportunity for regional collaborations between Israel and countries that signed the Abraham Accords (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan) and with potential candidates, including Saudi Arabia. In addition to the top-priority defense and security needs, countries in the region are attributing increasing importance to addressing acute challenges relating to water scarcity, food insecurity and improving public healthcare systems – as an integral part of their national development plans:

Ÿ   In relation to water, countries in the region are contending with overexploitation of freshwater sources, a shortage of recycling and partial access to clean water. Israel offers proven solutions for desalination, wastewater recycling, smart water management and data-based forecasting technologies.

Ÿ   In relation to food, there is high dependence on imports, coupled with a desire to strengthen sustainable local production. Israel offers unique know-how in desert agriculture, precision irrigation, advanced cultivation technologies and food-tech solutions.

Ÿ   In relation to healthcare, relatively high morbidity rates, disparities in access to medicine in outlying regions and a growing need for personalized healthcare solutions create numerous opportunities for Israel, which is an innovation leader in fields such as digital medicine, telemedicine, genetic data analyses and bioinformatics.

Goal-oriented collaborations in these fields, harmonized with the target countries’ needs and national vision, could enable Israel to establish an ongoing regional presence and deepen partnerships based on the values of stability, sustainability and innovation. Considering the inherent potential, this document recommends a policy based on four key guiding principles:

Ÿ   Adapting Israeli solutions to local needs: Adapting innovative Israeli technologies and services to government plans and SDGs in Abraham Accords countries, by creating partnerships with local governmental and private entities.

Ÿ   Promoting integration into national ventures using a public-private partnership model (PPP): Encouraging Israeli companies to participate in wide-scale national projects in the Middle East, led by sovereign funds, by establishing local branches in order to reduce legal and regulatory obstacles.

Ÿ   Establishing a dedicated financial support mechanism: Devising a system of state guarantees and risk insurance for Israeli business activities in Abraham Accords countries, focusing on markets such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to contend with project financing difficulties.

Ÿ   Formulating of a multi-year strategic plan for international development: Adding a humanitarian layer to Israel’s commercial approach through joint ventures between Israel and Abraham Accords countries in developing countries, for the purposes of  promoting regional stability and humanitarian influence and establishing Israel’s standing as a responsible partner.

Germany, the leading European country in advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and a strong supporter of regional integration in the Middle East, can play a key role in supporting and building this process, in conjunction with the European Union, which has already formed a strategic partnership with the Gulf states. A trilateral partnership between Israel, the Gulf states and Germany/the EU can become a significant engine for promoting stability, innovation and sustainable development in the region.

To read the full article

While Israel grapples with the drama surrounding the military advocate general’s office and the murky diplomatic maneuvers in Gaza, Washington is fast-tracking President Donald Trump’s grand strategy for the Middle East.

The administration is aiming for November 18, the date of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the US. During the visit, the two sides are expected to announce an expanded defensive pact and new arms deals, even before resolving Saudi Arabia’s demand for independent uranium enrichment.

Statements by senior Iranian officials about their determination to rebuild damaged nuclear sites and continue enrichment are likely to be used by bin Salman to justify his nuclear ambitions. In light of this, he is expected to add the demand to the list of conditions for normalizing ties with Israel, after his previous request for a roadmap toward an Israeli-Palestinian political horizon was incorporated into Trump’s 20-point plan.

Saudi Arabia, which welcomed the Gaza ceasefire and voiced hopes for stability, remains, like the United Arab Emirates, skeptical about the feasibility of Trump’s plan for ending the war. Both nations have conditioned their participation in Gaza’s reconstruction on a sustained and stable ceasefire, a phased Israeli withdrawal, the disarmament of the Hamas terrorist organization, and the transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority or another internationally recognized body.

Trump and his team are likely to try to bundle these stipulations into the normalization deal Israel would be expected to accept.

About a week before bin Salman’s visit, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa is scheduled to visit Washington, where bilateral relations will be discussed. However, his ties with Israel are also likely to come up, in light of ongoing talks aimed at establishing security arrangements between the two countries.

Adding to this volatile mix is the growing tension on the Lebanese front, driven by Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts and the Lebanese government’s failure to dismantle the terrorist group.

US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack recently revealed troubling data about Hezbollah’s remaining firepower and the Lebanese government’s inability to address the threat. Combined with warnings from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, this has reignited public discussion around the possibility of another round of fighting in Lebanon, despite official rhetoric about peace prospects.

So what does all this indicate?

First, instability remains the defining feature of the region. The intense involvement and close monitoring by Trump and his advisors reflects their understanding that the embers are still glowing on every front.

Second, ambiguity. The ceasefire and diplomatic arrangements in each arena were intentionally left vague to expedite agreements, but this has allowed for divergent interpretations. Reality on the ground will ultimately shape the outcome.

Third, disarmament. The idea that the so-called “resistance axis” can be disarmed through diplomatic agreements is, at best, naïve. An editorial last week on Hamas’ Al-Resalah website predicted that efforts to disarm both Hamas and Hezbollah will fail miserably.

The writers stressed the centrality of armed struggle to the resistance ideology and argued that disarming these groups would effectively spell the end of the axis, an outcome the groups cannot allow. In both Gaza and Lebanon, there is no governing authority capable of enforcing such a disarmament.

Was Israel too quick to ease military pressure?

The famous observation by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz that war is the continuation of politics by other means has been frequently cited by those arguing that the time has come for diplomacy. But in light of the current picture, it’s worth asking whether Israel was too hasty in scaling back its military pressure.

Either way, it is not too late to learn the lessons and recalibrate.

First and foremost, Israel must avoid trading real strategic gains for vague future promises. This applies to preserving its military presence and freedom of action in Syria, to nuclear enrichment in Saudi Arabia, and to any future diplomatic frameworks with the Palestinians.

Second, Israel must not compromise in the fight to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah from rebuilding and rearming. With all due respect to mediators and even the US, this is a task that only Israel can carry out.

Third, no matter what agreements are signed or understandings reached, reality on the ground will be determined by action. Israel should take advantage of the current moment, while Hamas and Hezbollah are weakened, to impose the arrangements it deems necessary.

This policy may carry risks, of renewed hostilities, friction with mediators, and possibly even with the US administration, but the alternative is far more costly.

Published in  Israel Hayom, November 03, 2025.

Fifty years ago, on November 10, 1975, the United Nations notoriously passed General Assembly Resolution 3379 declaring that “Zionism is racism.” Since then, the UN has become the ultimate cesspool of ferocious anti-Zionism, raw antisemitism, and rank anti-Americanism.

It is time for the United States to lead a global process of repentance and repair by defunding the UN all-together and replacing it with a series of professional bodies free of fecund hostility to Jews/Israelis and liberated from radical anti-American ideologies.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations back in 1975, ripped into the infamous resolution, recognizing it was an attempt to demean America by demeaning its ally. He repudiated what he would later call the “Big Red Lie” as an assault on democracy and decency. And he warned that this libel would enter the international bloodstream.

Alas, he was right. With its perverse Soviet-orchestrated distortions of language, history, and reality, Resolution 3379 “reeked of the totalitarian mind, stank of the totalitarian state” – as Prof. Gil Troy reminds us in an important article this week in Commentary Magazine.

Troy: “With the bully’s instinctive genius, the haters understood what would hurt Israel’s reputation most—and what the world would swallow easily. They showed how to foist broadly-agreed-upon aversions—to racism, to genocide—onto the Jews.”

“Totalitarian anti-Zionism helped Western elites cast Palestinians as noble, oppressed, disenfranchised people of color and Israelis as ignoble, oppressive, racist whites. It helped progressives ignore the Palestinian national movement’s violence, Islamism, sexism, and homophobia. The Red-Green alliance united leftists with Islamists, and Moynihan’s ‘Big Red Lie’ became the ‘Big Red-Green Lie’ that refuses to die.”

Ben Cohen and David May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington detailed this week the extraordinary resources devoted by the UN to the demonization of Israel.

This begins with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which drives the Israel-as-colonialist and Israel-as-an-apartheid-state narratives (over $3 million per year over 50 years).

It continues with the UN Palestine Committee and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People; the Division for Palestinian Rights; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been shown to be a close collaborator of Hamas; the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories; and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices.
Even more absurd are UNHRC (Human Rights Council) Agenda Item 7, which requires the body to scrutinize Israel’s human rights record at every meeting it convenes (Israel is the only country subject to this treatment); the UN Register of Damages (since 2007 to assist Palestinians in collecting on claims of damages allegedly incurred by the construction of Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank); and so many other virulently hostile bodies.
Then there are the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Galant (on the basis of malevolent falsehoods and serial abuses of its own processes); and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which has falsely accused Israel of illegally occupying the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Grotesque accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity bounce around the UN, the ICJ, the ICC and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. They feed these claims into each other’s reports and then repeat and recycle them to create an infernal echo chamber of Israel demonization.

US SENATORS Mike Lee (R-UT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rick Scott (R-FL) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the DEFUND Act, which would initiate the United States’ withdrawal from the United Nations, citing in part the U.N.’s actions toward Israel.

But the UN offense is not just about Israel. As researchers Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Edwin Black, and Claudia Rosett have shown the U.S. government provides more than $20 billion to the UN and related international organizations and multilateral entities – that are pugnaciously anti-American and radically woke too.

The Trump administration started in the right direction by ending US funding for UNRWA. The complete dismantling of UNRWA is the next challenge. Its $1.5 billion budget can much better be spent on real refugee settlement and peacemaking, perhaps through the new US-led stabilization administration for Gaza.

Trump also should reopen the 1947 agreement locating UN headquarters, tax free, in NY. And yes, defunding of the UN all-together may be warranted, at least for a while – as prophylactic treatment.

Personally, I don’t really believe that the UN can be reformed. It operates with no real accountability, no functional moral compass, and no mechanism for acquiring any such vital features. It has developed a tyrant-friendly, diplomatically immune, and collectively irresponsible DNA.

Worse still, as Melanie Phillipps has written, it is an “unstoppable geyser of moral and intellectual corruption. It teaches the West that lies about Israel are truths and truths are lies, and it has turned what the West tells itself is morality and conscience into an agenda of evil.”

It has ensured that the West can no longer distinguish more generally between victim and oppressor, reality and propaganda, right and wrong. Treating the UN and the ‘international law’ it has promoted as the moral arbiters of global order is not just a sick joke. It has made the world sick, too.

ALTHOUGH EVERYBODY knows that the UN is broken, it’s pretty much taboo to call for its shutdown. The usual defense of the UN is that “it may be imperfect,” but “it’s all we’ve got” – a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won’t stick or won’t work at all.

The counter argument is this: Is the UN really the best we can do? Do we have to settle for a system that elects Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran to lead human rights councils, women’s rights agencies, and cultural bodies? If the UN is “all we’ve got,” and it can cavalierly disregard slaughters in Syria and Sudan while outrageously branding Israel a war criminal enterprise, then it is way past time to come up with something else!

Therefore, it is time to create alternatives to the UN, like a “Covenant of Democratic Nations,” an UN-successor entity limited to nations governed by democratic principles. This body could nullify crazy acts and nasty resolutions – such as UNESCO’s denial of Jewish Jerusalem. The Covenant also would seek to create a long-overdue new body of reformed and updated international law.

Claudia Rosett’s book What To Do About the UN demurs from this. She feels that the ideal of “world peace” led by democracies is an overreach. It is too driven by ideals that won’t translate easily into action. (Just how will democracy be defined for membership purposes?).

Her guiding principle for replacing the UN is competition, the establishment of professional agencies with no grandiose moral pretensions. Competition is what takes down monopolies, and the UN is the biggest monopoly of them all.

It is a mammoth helped along by immunities, privileges and lavish government contributions, and it is backed by legions of special interest NGOs around the globe that lobby for more.

As a result, Rosett writes, the UN has become like the failed collectivist experiments of the 20th century; those huge old Soviet state enterprises and gargantuan Chinese communist industries. It was and is very hard to shutter these behemoths since they are tied into every aspect of a dysfunctional economy plus their employees’ lives. They are a terrible drain.

You fix this by creating competition. So, Rosett proposes the establishment of several coalitions that are not so much pegged to ideals, but rather are mission-driven by countries with specific shared interests – like NATO during the Cold War.

As for the residual usefulness of some type of global “talking shop” in which even Iran can bluster and Russia can dissimulate – well, if at all, this should be a forum for exchange of views only; for blowing-off steam. Rosett: “It should be a General Assembly minus the votes and minus agencies with multi-billion-dollar budgets. It is not a joke to suggest that it would be better to be housed in a gymnasium somewhere in Iowa (or Siberia) than in a multi-billion-dollar gilded chamber in Manhattan.”

Thinkers and experts need to apply themselves diligently to this task. It is time for those with know-how, resources, and genuine goodwill toward future generations to take an in-depth and non-polemical look at the opportunity cost to the West of cleaving to the UN.

Published in The Jerusalem Post 24.10.2025.

On September 8, the finance ministers of Israel and India signed an investment protection agreement (BIT), a move that significantly upgrades bilateral relations between the two countries. The timing speaks volumes. As uncertainty grips West Asia and tensions between India and the United States are yet to be resolved, this agreement sends an unmistakable message—the Israel-India partnership stands on its own merits.

This also suggests that ambitious regional initiatives such as IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Connectivity Corridor, simply cannot succeed without Israel as a cornerstone partner.

The signed agreement is not historic as reported by many, since a mutual investment protection agreement existed between the countries from 1996 until 2017, when the Indian government decided to comprehensively cancel such agreements following an overall policy change. However, this is a very important agreement that places Israel first among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to sign such an agreement with India. The agreement is expected to increase mutual investments, whose current scope doesn’t reflect the tremendous potential between the countries.

For comparison, Japan is the dominant Asian investor in Israel with approximately 9 per cent of foreign investments in high-tech (2024) and a total of about half a billion dollars. Meanwhile, India, despite a decent presence of several major Indian corporations in Israel for decades, is barely seen in innovative sectors, except for defence, health, and infrastructure.

The gap between India and other Asian countries vis-à-vis Israel is also evident in trade. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics data, while trade between Israel and China stood at over $16 billion (a trade deficit of over $10 billion), trade volume between Israel and India stood at only about $4.7 billion (excluding defence exports and diamonds).

Official sources in both countries hope that the newly signed investment protection agreement will provide tailwinds for a Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement, negotiations for which have been unsuccessful since 2010. However, alongside the bureaucratic difficulties and slow pace of progress, these gaps actually indicate the enormous potential that exists in the Israel-India partnership.

Nowadays, it has become trendy to speak of the strategic partnership with India. At a time when Israel faces an extremely challenging political position in the international arena, many view India as a new wonder and rising power standing alongside Israel despite calls for boycotts. However, the strategic partnership between Israel and India is not new but rather evolving.

For many decades, Israel-India relations focused primarily on two strategic areas: agriculture and defence. The first is strategic because Israeli knowledge assists approximately 800 million farmers in India; the second is strategic because Israel has proven itself as a reliable defence partner to India throughout its various wars against Pakistan, in 1965, 1971, in the Kargil War in 1999, and in the recent escalation (Operation Sindoor). But despite cooperation in these areas, relations remained low-profile most of the time.

The transformation began in 2014, and I witnessed it firsthand as director of the Asia-Pacific Department at the National Security Council. Months before the election that would sweep Narendra Modi to power, I advised the Israeli National Security Advisor that Modi’s victory would create an unprecedented opportunity for a bilateral breakthrough—if we moved swiftly to capitalise on it. The response was immediate and comprehensive: every government ministry mobilised to map obstacles, opportunities, and priorities for the new relationship.

All this ultimately led to a government decision to advance relations between the countries, PM Modi’s historic visit to Israel, and reciprocal visits by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to India. Thanks to the Abraham Accords, this partnership also aspired to positively influence the regional level with the establishment of I2U2 (2021) and subsequently the announcement of the IMEC connectivity initiative (2023). Recognition of the strategic importance of strengthening the partnership with India became a priority.

Two years of war have only sharpened these strategic calculations. Beyond bilateral cooperation in investment, trade, defence production, and political support, India serves as a natural bridge between East and West and opens a door for cooperation between Israel and the Global South.

As one of PM Modi’s closest advisors shared with me at the time, “The partnership and friendship between India and Israel must be built as a partnership for generations, yielding fruits not only for both countries but also for the regional environments in which they operate.”

This investment agreement represents more than economic coordination—it is the latest milestone toward that generational vision. In an era when strategic partnerships often prove fragile and self-interested, the Israel-India relationship offers something increasingly rare: a foundation built on complementary strengths, shared democratic values, and mutual respect that transcends the political weather of any given moment.

Published in Firstpost, September 12, 2025.

לורם איפסום דולור סיט אמט, קונסקטורר אדיפיסינג אלית לפרומי בלוף קינץ תתיח לרעח. לת צשחמי צש בליא, מנסוטו צמלח לביקו ננבי, צמוקו בלוקריה.