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On the latest Jerusalem Dispatch podcast episode, Calev Ben-David and co-host Ruth Marks Eglash tackle the two questions every Israeli is asking: Is the Iran war over, and did we win? Their verdict is uncomfortable.
The emerging US–Iran framework looks like a slightly tougher rerun of the 2015 JCPOA, leaving Iran’s ballistic missiles, terror proxies, and regime untouched, and possibly folding a Hezbollah ceasefire into the bargain.
The northern front gets the episode’s sharpest moment: Ben-David describes the IDF collecting fishing nets from Israeli fishermen to string over bases and tanks against cheap Hezbollah drones, a tactic he says echoes Ukraine’s trenches and the old south Lebanon security zone Israel was eventually forced to abandon.
From there, the hosts turn to the politics: Netanyahu’s scramble over election timing, the ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill, the rising stock of Gadi Eisenkot, rumors of a Gilad Erdan-led “Likud Bet” breakaway, and the international firestorm Itamar Ben-Gvir set off by humiliating the Gaza flotilla activists on camera.
