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Friday, March 13, 2026

03/13 Links Pt1: Regime Change Without Nation Building; The Strange Coalition Defending Tehran; US strikes Kharg Island in Iran, Islamic Regime 'Crown Jewel

From Ian:

Jonathan Schanzer: Regime Change Without Nation Building
Here is where it is useful to remember that the people of Iran are arguably the country’s greatest resource. They are educated. A less radical, more pragmatic regime existed in Tehran in the memories of everyone older than 55, and the experience of living under theocratic tyranny has been the only experience young Iranians know.

Is Iran ripe for regime change? In 2009, Iranians overwhelmingly voted for liberalization, only to have the mullahs fix the result—leading to an uprising that had to be crushed, though not nearly as brutally as the killing spree in January 2026 that showed the regime’s truly murderous colors in the mass slaughter of tens of thousands. Indeed, Iranians have in recent memory sought to carve a different path and, just two months ago, were in open revolt. This is not a quiescent population whose will has been shattered.

Unfortunately, little is known about the opposition on the ground right now. But Iranian unity will be crucial to any effort to reach a stable end state in this war. We’ll soon see if the Persian-speaking majority can join forces with the complex patchwork of Iranian minorities.

Self-defined experts on these matters look at the prospect of Iranian common cause with deep skepticism. But we Americans are hardly the best judges of the ways to achieve common ground. Our divisive politics have in recent decades rendered American foreign policy schizophrenic, with key principles shifting violently every four or eight years. The debates over military intervention, regime change, and even America’s place in the world have yielded chaos and confusion, both at home and abroad.

While Americans have been exceptionally vociferous in expressing their varying political views in recent years, the Iran war has finally brought a major fault line to the surface. This heated battle on both the left and the right is between neo-isolationists and interventionists. For those who believe no good can come of war and that America fails when it fights, no argument exists that will penetrate their hard shell of determinist defeatism. But foreign policy theorists in the neo-isolationist camp—those who do not want to appear to be isolationist but rather realist—warn that whatever America does is merely a distraction from the real issue of the 21st century. That issue is our “great power competition” with China. Any cent we spend for any purpose other than countering China is a penny wasted. Of course, since China is allied with Iran and sees Iran as an extension of its sphere of interest, an American defeat of Iran would serve the purpose of putting China on notice that we will not look kindly on another totalitarian regime’s effort to spread its shadow across the globe. Nor will we sit idly by.

The task before Donald Trump is finding a middle ground that appeals to the isolationists and interventionists, on the left and the right, all of whom fervently believe that they are putting “America First.” To secure his place in American history, and to end this war on his terms, he must find a way to validate both camps while engineering a decisive victory in Iran that heralds a new Middle East, sets back rivals like China and Russia, and does not empty out the U.S. Treasury.

None of this is simple or intuitive. But history is replete with American regime-change experiments that did not bankrupt America and did not thrust it into a forever war. Should Trump find a way of repeating that history, and not the failures of the early 21st century, while vanquishing the greatest threat to American interests in the Middle East, “America First” won’t just be a political slogan. It will be a blueprint for other important battles amid the litany of geopolitical challenges that lie ahead.
Brendan O'Neill: War on Iran was not ‘unprovoked’
I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase ‘unprovoked war’. It’s been rolling off leftist tongues since the explosion of hostilities in Iran. This week, Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and scores of hoary peaceniks wrote a letter to the Guardian insisting Britain should have nothing to do with America and Israel’s ‘unprovoked war’ in Iran.

Here’s my question: is the rape and murder of Jews not a provocation? Was the worst anti-Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust – 7 October – not a provocation? The tyrants of Tehran were the paymasters of the jihadist brutes who carried out that slaughter. They lavished guns and training on that army of anti-Semites that invaded Israel by air, sea and land not even three years ago. That wasn’t a provoking act?

Is it not a provocation to rain thousands of missiles onto a neighbouring country? Is it not a provocation to subject a nation to a ballistic swarm that causes the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians and the deaths of scores of innocents, including 12 Druze kids playing football? That’s what Hezbollah has done these past three years. Hezbollah received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Islamic Republic to pursue precisely such violent badgering of the Jewish state. That isn’t a provocation?

You can say many things about America and Israel’s war in Iran. Some say it’s valiant, others that it’s reckless. But one thing you can’t say, not if you want to be taken seriously, is that it is ‘unprovoked’. Unless, of course, you think the mass murder of Jews should have no repercussions. That, just like in the 1930s, or the 1490s, mobs of anti-Semites should be free to kill Jews with impunity. If I were you, I’d keep that view to myself.

Traditionally it was the pursuers of war who engaged in linguistic trickery to justify their actions or disguise their true motives. Tariq Ali calls it the ‘grammar of deceit’. Today, such semantic duplicity is more readily found among war’s opponents.

Indeed, President Trump, in contrast with his predecessors who dolled up their warmaking as ‘peacekeeping’, has spoken with uncommon frankness about the nature of war. He has told of the ‘death, fire and fury’ that will be visited upon the Iranian regime. Ugly, but honest. It’s the other side, Trump’s noisy doubters and Israel’s legion haters, who are using language as a weapon not of clarification but of concealment.

‘Unprovoked war’ – that isn’t only factually wrong, it’s intentionally dissembling. It draws a thick veil over the events of the past three years. It absolves the Islamic Republic of its sins of violent anti-Semitism. It memory-holes the war crimes funded by that regime and conditions us to think of Iran as an innocent party under ‘imperial’ assault by the Jewish State and its American lackeys. It is a lie masquerading as a critique.
John Spencer: War Reveals the Truth: Russian and Chinese Weapons Are Outmatched
Modern warfare is no longer defined by individual weapons platforms alone. It is defined by networks. Western militaries have spent decades investing in systems that integrate satellites, aircraft, drones, sensors, cyber capabilities, and precision munitions into a unified battlefield architecture. This allows forces to detect targets faster, share information instantly, and strike with extraordinary precision.

Russia and China have attempted to replicate elements of this model, but the battlefield evidence suggests their systems remain less integrated and more vulnerable to disruption. Battlefield performance carries geopolitical consequences.

In 1982, during the Lebanon War, Israeli fighters destroyed more than 60 Syrian aircraft supplied by the Soviet Union without losing a single plane. Soviet air defenses that had been widely exported suddenly appeared far less formidable. Moscow’s reputation as an arms supplier suffered.

Something similar is happening again today, and the battlefield evidence is mounting.

When Russian air defenses fail to protect Russian forces in Ukraine, defense planners around the world take notice. When Chinese-supplied air defense systems fail to prevent precision strikes in South Asia, potential buyers pay attention. And when Iranian defenses built with Russian and Chinese technology fail to prevent repeated penetrations by U.S. and Israeli forces, the message becomes unmistakable.

The battlefield is the ultimate arms exhibition.

Countries that spend billions of dollars on military equipment are not buying hardware for parades. They are buying systems that must function in the most demanding conditions imaginable. Every destroyed radar, every neutralized air defense battery, and every successful penetration of an air defense network sends a signal to the global defense market.

That signal is increasingly clear.

Western military technology, particularly that developed by the United States and Israel, continues to demonstrate a decisive advantage in real combat conditions. From stealth aircraft and precision-guided weapons to advanced electronic warfare and integrated intelligence networks, these systems are proving their effectiveness across multiple wars.

Russia and China will continue to export weapons. Many countries will still buy them because they are cheaper or politically easier to obtain. But the evidence from modern battlefields is mounting.

Russian and Chinese systems have not saved Iran. They have not protected Russian forces in Ukraine. And they did not prevent India from striking precisely where and when it chose during Operation Sindoor.

War is the harshest evaluator of military technology.

Right now, the verdict from the battlefield is unmistakable.
US military supremacy shines as China fails big in Iran, Venezuela
China has become the laughingstock of the international community.

For years, its leaders showcased their powerful HQ-9B missiles as the best air defense system. But they were lying. In less than a year, their system has failed catastrophically in Pakistan, in Venezuela and now in Iran.

The U.S. remains by far the most modern and feared military power in the world, and President Trump has proven it. In one day, U.S. and Israeli forces wiped out Iran’s military leadership, along with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In one day, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and extracted Nicolรกs Maduro without a single U.S. fatality.

Recall that it took President George H.W. Bush several days to capture General Manuel Noriega in Panama; the tracking and elimination of Osama Bin Laden took almost 10 years. Here is a historical fact for which no is crediting the current administration: Operations Absolute Resolve and Epic Fury have set a new standard.

Returning to China, the HQ-9B missiles and JY-27A radars were always impressive at military parades, but they have performed poorly in actual combat. They are blind, deaf, and mute.

The HQ-9B, also known as Red Flag 9, is a cheap copy of the powerful U.S. Patriot missiles and the Russian S-300. In theory, they have built-in radar systems to track and engage multiple targets simultaneously. In practice, they have demonstrated the opposite.

Since May of last year, serious concerns have been raised about the HQ-9B’s inadequacy. In India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, the Chinese missiles were soundly defeated for four consecutive days. They were unable to defend, destroy or track anything.

China’s JY-27 radar is a system capable of identifying and scanning targets between 280 and 390 kilometers away. It specializes in the early detection of fast, supersonic F-22 and F-35 fighter jets. But in real combat, when Maduro was captured in Venezuela, the Chinese radars became a point of national humiliation and shame, failing to detect even one of the 150 aircraft that penetrated Venezuelan airspace.

Operation Absolute Resolve also humiliated Russia. Venezuela had invested more than $2 billion in S-300 missiles. Despite their power, they were rendered immobile by powerful American fighters, bombers and electronic warfare aircraft.


The Strange Coalition Defending Tehran
Iran’s reach has also extended into attempts to silence critics abroad. Dissidents in exile have faced surveillance, harassment, and assassination plots. The Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad has been the target of multiple kidnapping and assassination attempts uncovered by U.S. authorities. The Iranian-German dissident Jamshid Sharmahd was abducted abroad and later executed in Iran. Western intelligence agencies have also linked Iranian operatives to plots targeting political figures, including U.S. President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials have long defined their foreign policy through hostility toward the U.S. and Israel. State-sponsored rallies regularly featured chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and official propaganda even displayed countdown clocks predicting Israel’s destruction.

None of this history appears to trouble the coalition currently campaigning against confronting the regime. Instead, opposition to military action against Iran has been framed as a defense of peace and international stability.

But this framing obscures a central reality: the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary drivers of regional violence for more than four decades. Its financial and military support has enabled armed groups across the Middle East, including Hamas, whose October 7, 2023, attack triggered the devastating war in Gaza. Without the training, funding, and weapons supplied by Tehran over many years, the scale of that conflict would almost certainly have been very different.

This contradiction lies at the heart of the current debate. The same activists who describe themselves as defenders of Palestinian rights, women’s liberation, and democratic values have mobilized against confronting a regime that systematically suppresses all three.

Wars often clarify political realities that peacetime rhetoric can obscure. The current confrontation with the Islamic Republic is producing precisely such clarity.

It is revealing that some of the loudest voices claiming the mantle of human rights are, in practice, shielding one of the world’s most repressive regimes. And it is exposing the uncomfortable truth that the language of justice and liberation can, at times, become a tool for protecting the very forces that deny those principles to millions.

In that sense, the conflict with Tehran is not only a geopolitical struggle. It is also a moment of moral illumination, one that is making increasingly clear who truly stands with freedom, and who stands in the way of it.
Douglas Murray: Why is the ‘gay press’ so cowardly on Iran?
Some of us have for years noted a particular oddity of the ‘rights movements’ as they have manifested in the West. Which is that however dogged – indeed dogmatic – they are at home, however much they will pursue a backbench MP or Republican congressman for not being completely on board with gay marriage or the transing of children, they become silent at the borders of Islam.

In a different universe, some 15 years ago or so – when the battle for gay equality was won – the remaining would-be warriors might have decided to continue their fight to highlight the abuse of gays in other countries. I mean real abuse, not just another story about the horrors of growing up under Section 28. ‘And on that bombshell we’ll find out what happens to the oil price tomorrow.’

Imagine if instead of spending 15 years trying to push ‘trans kids’ as the next forefront of the rights struggles, the activists had decided to stick to the basics and become more geographically adventurous. They could have. Just about the only gay pride organisers I have any respect for (the others being mere party organisers) are the people who have tried to hold gay equality protests in places like Moscow. That is actually brave.

The unwritten rule has been there for decades: the fight for gay equality – as for women’s rights – halts at the borders of Islam. You might say that is simply because of cowardice, or that no western groups could have made any impact on the Ayatollah’s thinking anyway. Or perhaps – most likely – the cowardice is caused by a fear of accusations of having a ‘colonialist mindset’ (which I think we can agree is the most dangerous mindset of all).

You could believe any or all of these excuses. But I can’t help finding it interesting that Trump may have just done more for gay rights in Iran than any activist group in the West could ever have dreamed of. Not that they’ll thank him, of course. They’re probably too busy trying to find another way to demonise the creator of Harry Potter.
Iran’s Lionesses risked everything for freedom. Would you?
I’m willing to bet there’s a pretty strong intersection between those who don’t think this war should take place and those who think Australia is a rotten, racist country with nothing good to offer.

The ongoing response to this war from the Australian Greens, from sections of the media and the professional protesting class is exactly what I’m talking about. Their suicidal empathy. Their prevailing view is not “look at the freedoms we have, our way of life, we must protect it” but “this is a terrible country, nothing to guard”.

These are the same people who happily welcome 3000 unvetted Gazans and a cohort of so-called ISIS brides to our shores yet would like to criminalise young Jewish Australians who choose to fight as lone soldiers in Israel. I understand why the latter go. Like me, they’ve grown up with a story that reminds them about courage and its price; reminds them that the Jewish people were almost eradicated – and if you don’t agree with that statement, back to school for you. The global population of Jews is still recovering from the Holocaust.

Instead of demonising these kids we should be saying to their peers, see that? That’s guts. There’s no such thing as courage without a commensurate price tag. How many young Australians, or old ones for that matter, think our country is worth defending?

Last weekend, Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke an inalienable truth. Better late than never, but truth regardless and I applaud her for it.

Speaking on the ABC’s Insiders program, Wong said: “Iran has flouted international law for decades and the international system has not been able to hold Iran to account and to take appropriate action.”

What she’s saying is that the international system of order, at which the UN sits at the centre, has failed to curb the colonisation of terror. Could not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I suppose when the Obama administration handed over $US1.7bn to Iran that made it a little harder to fight the regime.

Wong was explicit in her comments: “They’ve sponsored terrorism in their region. They have killed countless people in their region with impunity. They have failed to comply with their international obligations in relation to non-proliferation and safeguards. They have failed to allow the nuclear watchdog to be there. And they have also conducted attacks in Australia, directed attacks.”

As one of my smart young colleagues said to me this week (speaking of her own cohort, but Australians more broadly) – when are they going to wake up? When the fire is burning at our doorstep.

Another question might also be this: What will it take for us to find our courage again?
Sexual torture, Koran beatings: the horrors women face in Iran’s prisons
In recent days,seven players from Iran’s national women’s football team managed to seek asylum and remain in Australia after the Islamic Republic denounced them as traitors and threatened their safety. Their escape was made possible with the support of the Iranian community in Brisbane, who suddenly transformed from ordinary supporters of the Iranian women’s team into a kind of “rescue operation for Iran’s Lionesses”, as well as the swift support of the Australian government.

But what will happen to the rest of them?

In the videos, you could see one of the players being pushed from behind while another pulled her forward as she was forced onto a bus that would take her to the airport. What future awaits her … and the other Iranian Lionesses once they set foot back in Iran? The regime has accused them of “treason in wartime.” Iranian women’s soccer team told ‘if you go back home, there will be more consequences’

Will they merely be expelled from sport? Or will they face prison in the general wards? Solitary confinement? Forced confessions on television? Psychological torture? Physical torture? Sexual torture? Mock executions? Or real executions?

In its fight against opponents – especially when they are women – the Islamic Republic can be remarkably inventive, harsh and meticulous, much like its own sexual codes of religious law.

Mina (pseudonym), who herself has experienced the regime’s prisons, told The Australian: “They repeatedly struck my head with a Koran so hard that my nose began to bleed. The interrogator also touched my body under my clothes while using disgusting sexual language, and repeatedly asked which newspaper editors I had slept with.”

She added: “He told me, ‘I will bring your 12-year-old son here and make him rape you. Then you will confess on television.”

Mina’s story is not unusual; Sharia law is closely intertwined with violence against women. In Koran 4:34 (Surah An-Nisa), it states: “As for those women from whom you fear disobedience, first admonish them, then abandon them in bed, and [if that fails] strike them.”

One Islamic Riwayat (a saying attributed to the Prophet or the Imams) says, “Most of the inhabitants of Hell are women.”

Within such a cultural framework, imprisonment for women in Iran is alarmingly common. Women can be detained for trivial reasons: nail polish, showing a strand of hair, dancing, singing, walking hand-in-hand with a boyfriend, or having a romantic or sexual relationship.
US strikes Kharg Island in Iran, Islamic Regime 'Crown Jewel,' Trump says in Truth statement
The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) struck Kharg Island, one of Iran's main oil terminals, US President Donald Trump announced on Friday.

"Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

According to Trump's announcement, the strikes were focused on military targets on the island and avoided the oil installations, which provide a naval exit for almost 90% of the Iranian oil exports.

"Our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known, but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen not to wipe out the oil Infrastructure on the island," Trump said.

In a subsequent post, Trump also said: "Iran had plans of taking over the entire Middle East, and completely obliterating Israel. Just like Iran itself, those plans are now dead." Trump says Israel-US goals might not be fully aligned

Trump's comments came minutes after he talked to reporters at Joint Base Andrews while leaving Air Force 1. There, he said that the US and Israel's goals for the war in Iran might "be a little different."

He also said that the US Navy will begin escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz "very soon" and that the Iranian Navy "is gone."

"The situation in Iran is going very well. A lot of big hits today... We're in very good control," he said and added, "Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Most of their military is gone... Just about everything is gone, and you'll see that."


Explosion rocks Tehran square during Quds Day march, Iranian state media says
An explosion occurred in the vicinity of a Quds Day rally in Tehran on Friday, Iranian state media reported.

The cause of the explosion is currently unknown.

Photos and footage on social media showed that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were in attendance.

Additionally, several prominent political figures were said by state media to be marching in Tehran, including Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, head of the Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, and chief of police Ahmad-Reza Radan.

Larijani calls out Trump, blames Israel
Speaking to state media during the march, Larijani spoke out against US President Donald Trump, and blamed the explosion on Israel.

"Trump doesn't understand that the Iranian nation is a mature, strong, and determined one. As American pressure grows, the nation's determination will strengthen. The Zionist regime's attacks towards the march is a sign of its hopelessness."

Radan also spoke, saying that "The people came today to tell the enemy - we are not afraid of you. The people responded to the sound of the explosion with shouts of 'Allahu Akbar.' Before the eyes of the frustrated enemy, the nation will not leave the site, and victory nears."


Benjamin Weinthal: Inside the Israeli drone unit taking on Iran and Hezbollah
Israel’s Squadron 200, also known as the first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Squadron, has played a crucial role in destroying more than half of the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile launchers as the 14th day of the war unfolds across the Middle East.

Fox News Digital gained access to one of Israel’s most experienced and veteran UAV operators from Squadron 200. "I have been flying drones for the past 25 years, and other operational missions have prepared me for this war," said the IDF Squadron leader.

He summed up the highly sensitive nature of his work in protecting the Israeli civilian population. "Every night that my wife and my kids sleep a full night without an alarm is something I can give credit to the air force and drone operators." Israel’s technology system warns Israelis with mobile phone messages and wailing public alarms that provide an advanced notice of incoming Iranian missiles and drones.

The IDF drone commander said the main goal of his squadron is to "find rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles that are a risk to our pilots who fly over and destroy them before they launch missiles and gain air superiority for the area and reduce the risk for civilians back at home."

He added that "We can take a lot of credit for the reduction" in Iranian missiles and drones fired at Israel.

The stakes are high for the UAV operators. Iran's aerial warfare campaign has led to the deaths of 12 Israelis and over 2,975 people have been admitted to Israeli hospitals.


Iran’s ‘Entire Ballistic Missile Production Capacity’ Destroyed in Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth Says
The U.S. military has eliminated Iran’s "entire ballistic missile production capacity" in just under two weeks of intensive operations, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters on Friday, adding that "every company that builds every component of those missiles has been functionally defeated."

"We're shooting down and destroying what missiles they still have in stock, but more importantly, ensuring that they have no ability to make more," Hegseth said as Operation Epic Fury entered its 13th day. The United States has struck more than 6,000 regime targets since combat operations began, destroying the Islamic Republic’s "production lines, their plants, their defense innovation centers" as well as "factory lines all across Iran," he told reporters.

Hegseth said operations are on pace "to defeat, destroy, disable all of [Iran’s] meaningful military capabilities at a pace the world has never seen before." As it stands, "Iran doesn’t have a functioning air force" and its "entire navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf."

Iran’s ballistic missile fire has dropped by 90 percent since war operations began and strikes have plummeted by 95 percent, according to Hegseth, who went on to confirm for the first time publicly that the regime’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, "is wounded and likely disfigured" by air strikes in the war’s earliest days.

"They've gone underground, cowering. That's what rats do," Hegseth said of the hardline regime’s remaining leaders. "They know that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling. They can barely communicate, let alone coordinate."

Friday’s operations will again mark "the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran," Hegseth said, signaling that the conflict is far from over. "The number of sorties and number of bomber pulses, the highest yet, [are] ramping up and only up."


Six US soldiers killed as refueling plane crashes in Iraq due to apparent accident
The US Central Command said Friday that all six crew members died after a KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq in an apparent accident involving another tanker.

The military said the circumstances of the incident are being investigated. Earlier, US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said the crash followed an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace,” and that the other plane landed safely.

The military said the loss of the aircraft was “not due to hostile or friendly fire.”

The deaths of the crew members bring the total of American service members killed in the war with Iran to 13.

“The identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified,” the military said.

On Thursday, CENTCOM said in a statement: “The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.”

The second tanker involved in the incident landed at Ben Gurion Airport earlier in the evening. The aircraft had sent a “squawk code” of 7700, an international emergency signal, according to flight tracking data.


Time to implement Ben-Gurion’s vision: Litani River is Israel's natural northern border
More than a century ago, in 1918, David Ben-Gurion wrote a remarkable essay titled Gvul artzeinu v’admatah – “The Borders of Our Land and Its Territory.” It was written before the State of Israel even existed, when the Ottoman Empire had just collapsed, and the modern Middle East was being carved up by foreign powers.

Ben-Gurion asked a simple question: What are the natural borders of the Land of Israel?

His answer was not based on politics or temporary diplomatic arrangements. It was based on geography, history, and the strategic reality of the land itself.

He wrote that the Land of Israel is a natural geographic unit bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Syrian desert in the east, the deserts of Sinai and Arabia in the south, and the mountains of Lebanon and Hermon in the north.

And, most importantly, he concluded that the natural northern border of the Land of Israel is the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Think about that.

The very founder of the State of Israel understood something that we are painfully relearning today through war and bloodshed: the Litani River is the only defensible northern border for the Jewish state.

For decades, Israel has allowed Hezbollah, an Iranian terror army, to entrench itself just meters from our northern communities. The result has been predictable: rockets, tunnels, terror attacks, and the evacuation of entire Israeli towns.

This is what happens when a nation ignores the strategic geography of its own land.

Ben-Gurion understood that south of the Litani, the terrain, infrastructure, and population patterns are tied to the Galilee, while north of it, the Lebanese mountain region begins. The Litani is not an arbitrary line; it is a natural defensive boundary.

History has proven Ben-Gurion right.


Iranian cluster bombs cause damage but no injuries at multiple sites in central Israel
Iran fired several ballistic missile salvos at Israel on Friday, some of which carried cluster munition warheads, causing damage at several sites, as the Israel Defense Forces assessed that between 4,000 and 5,000 Iranian troops have been killed in strikes since the start of the war.

Sirens sounded across Israel seven times on Friday, sending millions running for shelter, with emergency services reporting damage at several locations in the center of the country.

There were no reports of injuries, and the IDF said it was investigating the circumstances that led to the impacts.

One impact, possibly by a cluster bomb sub-munition or other fragments, sparked a blaze on the roof of a building in Shoham. According to the Kan public broadcaster, dozens of people have been forced to leave their homes as a result of the damage.

CCTV footage appeared to show an impact at an empty school in Rishon Lezion, and several cars were also damaged in the town.

“I finished running and saw the missile fall. It was a great miracle that my wife and three children were in the reinforced room,” witness Tomer Nativ told the Ynet news site. “It was scary, everything caught fire on the street.”

A cluster munition also hit a highway in the center of the country, causing a crater, while an impact in Holon sparked a fire in a building.

An additional missile hit an open area in central Israel — no sirens sounded as that projectile did not pose a threat to a populated area.

Cluster bomb warheads indiscriminately spread dozens of submunitions, each with several kilograms of explosives, over a radius of around 10 kilometers (6 miles).

The interception of such missiles has been effective but challenging, military officials have said, stressing that Israel’s air defenses are not hermetic.

Use of the munitions is banned under the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, whose over 100 signatories include much of Europe and Africa as well as the UK, Australia and Canada, but not Israel, Iran or the US.


Ben Shapiro: Two Terror Attacks in One Day. What is Happening??
With John Spencer
Two radical Muslims attack two targets on the same day – just the latest terror attack in a wave of them on American soil; we talk about what can be done; and we ask whether America has the will to outlast Iran’s terrorist regime?


Commentary Podcast: War Abroad, War At Home
Commentary contributing editor Eli Lake joins us today to discuss the two terrorist attacks in a Michigan synagogue and Old Dominion University, the reality of security for Jewish institutions in America, and the media's obsessive focus on the impact of antisemitism on Muslim Americans. Plus, is the U.S. military prepared to enforce passage in the Strait of Hormuz?


Tikvah Podcast: Yonah Jeremy Bob on the Mossad's Secret War on Iran
On February 28, 2026, Ali Khamenei was assassinated. He was killed in a joint American and Israeli airstrike, in a bunker so deep the elevator took five minutes to reach it, at a meeting with senior advisers whose location intelligence services had tracked for months. The infrastructure that made this targeted assassination possible—the human networks engaged in the patient penetration of one of the most hostile intelligence environments on earth—had been built over more than two decades. Today, Yonah Jeremy Bob joins Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to delve into how the Mossad build that infrastructure.

Bob is the senior military and intelligence analyst for the Jerusalem Post and has deep access to the Israeli intelligence community. His book Target Tehran, co-authored with Ilan Evyatar and published by Simon & Schuster in 2023, was named a top book of the year by the Wall Street Journal. When Prime Minister Netanyahu was photographed in his war room during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, a copy of Target Tehran was visible on the table in front of him. Bob also has a forthcoming book with the Wall Street Journal's Elliot Kaufman, titled In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.

Before the airstrikes, there was a decades-long effort to recruit agents inside the nuclear program, to infiltrate Iran's supply chains, and to track and, when necessary, to assassinate the Iranian officials and weapons producers who posed the greatest threat to Israel and America. This episode examines three operations in depth—the 2018 theft of Iran's nuclear archive, the assassination of the weapons-program chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the infiltration of the supply chain for the Natanz nuclear complex—and asks what Israeli human intelligence is contributing to Operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury.




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