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What Has the War Against Iran Revealed About the Status of Countries Around the World?
United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward, accompanied by other E3 members German Ambassador Ricklef Beutin and Deputy French Ambassador Jay Dharmadhikari, speaks to members of the press about Iran and nuclear weapons outside the UN Security Council chamber at UN Headquarters in New York City, US, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Angelina Katsanis
The Epic Fury/Roaring Lion War cast a spotlight on the power index of many countries and the global and regional balance of power. For the purposes of this paper, a country’s power is defined as its security and economic posture. A country may have additional supporting strengths (once called “soft”), such as diplomacy, influence, and internal resilience. For the weaker player, such strengths provide power, but their effectiveness is limited. Ultimately, they are embodied in two main ones: strategic-security posture and economic dominance.
There is a gap between a country’s self-perception and its actual power, as Russia learned after its decision to invade Ukraine. This paper assesses “objective” power rather than a country’s self-perception.
One country in the world today is considerably more powerful than all others: the United States. There are weak countries in the world. In fact, out of about 200 countries, a significant portion of them are either weak or have small yet sufficient power relative to their surroundings. A new member of the latter club is Spain, which was once a global empire but which is now weak in terms of both security and economy.
The other countries rest on a continuum. They can be divided into two types: those that strive for power and those that flee from weakness. The Epic Fury War held up a mirror to the global and regional arena, allowing for a recalibration of the position of various countries on the continuum.
There are several reasons why Epic Fury is a better indicator of countries’ strength than the war in Ukraine or the situation in the China Sea:
- It is the first global war crisis during the presidency of Donald Trump, who has placed the issue of power at the center of his strategy;
- it transformed from a regional crisis into a global one due to the energy issue and the supply chain challenges, which have intensified in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic; and
- it puts key geostrategic arenas to the test, such as Russia-Europe, India-Pakistan, and, in the Pacific, from China to Australia.
Estimating change in the power index of key countries
The description below is intended to provide initial directions for the professional and academic discourse on the issue.
Iran: The Islamic Republic has returned to fleeing from weakness. In the first two decades of its existence, the regime fled from weakness, with the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War playing a central role. However, in the last two decades, it changed course and moved toward striving for power. The Iranians decided that security power was more important than economic, and were willing to pay the painful price of sanctions in exchange for it. The main milestones of this shift seem to have been the regime’s success in suppressing the “Green Movement” protest in 2009; the absence of restrictions on its behavior in the missile field and in the regional arena in the JCPOA in 2015; its ability to supply advanced missile capabilities to proxies; and the victories of its axis in aiding the Assad regime in Syria and in the Houthis’ fight against the Saudis and the UAE. Unlike Qassem Soleimani, who strove for regional power in a calculated manner while managing risk, his successors were less rigorous, as evidenced by their inability to control Hamas on October 7. The current war, even if the Islamic regime does not yet fully understand it as such, is a severe blow to its striving after power. During the process of internalizing the results of the war, the regime will likely grasp that it has to return to the approach of fleeing from weakness.
United States: The US has strengthened its pursuit of power. Epic Fury was a purposeful display of the Americans’ absolute military superiority, especially as it was supported by an ally who is a “running horse,” not a “lazy donkey.” It experienced a slight backlash in the area of economic power, because it is still internally sensitive to energy price fluctuations, but this negative is insignificant relative to its achievements.
China and the Pacific: The Chinese have come out ahead in their pursuit of power. On the one hand, an ostensible ally of Beijing has been severely damaged and isolated. But on the economic level, through the strength it has built in recent years in the field of supply chains, China has demonstrated clear superiority over its Japanese, South Korean and Australian neighbors. On the military side, what happened in the Persian Gulf hardly whet the world’s appetite for further conflict in the China Sea, which strengthens China’s bargaining power.
Russia and Europe: The Russian balance sheet for the pursuit of power, especially vis-à-vis Europe, is positive. In economic terms, the war boosted its ability to profit from energy sales and balance the economic difficulties resulting from the long war and sanctions. In the security sphere, Europe’s weakness strengthens Russian power. Like Russia, Ukraine – a country that is by definition fleeing from weakness, especially in the current war – also managed to strengthen its position in the form of security and economic gains. On the other hand, Europe, fleeing from weakness, suffered another blow to its security power: the practical disintegration of the NATO alliance and the distancing from Europe of the United States, NATO’s critical component.
India and Pakistan: India’s quest for power has been negatively affected. Pakistan succeeded – in a process that has been going on for more than a year – in positioning itself as an asset to the United States, but was exposed for its weakness as a military partner of Saudi Arabia. However, this development should be analyzed more in the context of India, since the rapprochement between the United States and Pakistan is an American challenge to the independent strategy that India is pursuing, among other areas, in the Russian context. In addition, the war revealed weaknesses in the Indian supply chain. These developments reflect the fact that India still faces significant challenges in its quest for global power.
Germany, Great Britain and France: Here we see a reversal of roles. Germany is the one striving after power, while Britain and France, which, in recent decades, have exercised security power in various arenas, have been revealed as unable to exert power, mainly for internal reasons. They are now deep along the continuum among those fleeing from weakness, while Germany appears to have passed through another stage in its complex return to being a security power.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: Epic Fury posed a challenge to the Saudi approach of striving for power and fleeing from the weakness of the other Gulf countries. For decades, Saudi Arabia positioned itself as the key regional player striving for power through its enormous economic capabilities. The current de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman, attempted to regulate this effort through Vision 2030. In this pursuit, Saudi Arabia prioritized economic power over security power, and this resulted in painful military losses to the Houthis over the past decade. The Iranian decision to militarily attack the Gulf states and oil exports as a central strategic approach (albeit with no choice) represented a security challenge to the Gulf states’ economic power. Saudi Arabia will now have to reexamine whether it can continue to strive for power or must shift to the more realistic approach of fleeing from weakness.
In the other Gulf states, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait, the situation is even clearer. Their basic strategy is to flee from weakness. The war proved to them that they need to improve their capabilities, mainly in the security field and in alternatives to oil and gas flows.
Turkey‘s approach also retreated somewhat as a result of the war. It has shifted from a country that strives more and more after power to one that flees from weakness.
Israel: Epic Fury/Roaring Lion constituted a significant achievement in Israel’s pursuit of power – with an asterisk.
David Ben-Gurion’s national security strategy was designed as a flight from inherent weakness. It created a durable force with five components: a qualitative conventional military advantage, an image of nuclear deterrence, special relations with a superpower, economic and technological superiority, and national resilience.
Over a long process, Israel’s approach transformed from a flight from weakness to the pursuit of power. A number of key events can be highlighted: the Six-Day War, which confirmed Israel’s military power in the region and ultimately led to the peace agreement with Egypt; the leap to a hi-tech, free-market economy that manifested from 1992; and the process, resulting from the shock of the October 7, 2023 attack, of releasing itself from the constraints it had placed upon itself on its use of military force. That unshackling manifested in the operation in Khan Yunis in early 2024, the beeper operation and elimination of Nasrallah at the end of that year, and Operation Rising Lion in 2025. The State of Israel today is, as a result of the current war, a country with military and economic power much greater than its objective geo-political posture. However, when we look forward, we see that its position is unbalanced. Israel must re-strengthen the other elements of its power (see Perspective Paper No. 2347, June 3, 2025): an advanced, resilient society and economy, with improved long-term positioning of its relations with the United States and other powers.
Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and an expert in national security, strategic planning, and strategic communication. He is a cyber security strategist and a consultant to leading companies in Israel. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
The two young men who killed three people at a San Diego mosque on Monday published a conspiracy theory-filled manifesto whose primary focus was on Jews, calling them the “universal enemy.”
The manifesto’s contents also suggest they may have had additional plans to target Jewish institutions.
Authorities have identified Cain Lee Clark, 17, and Caleb Liam Vazquez, 18, as the shooters who killed a security guard and two members of the Islamic Center of San Diego. The two livestreamed the attack before both were found dead in a car by apparent suicide, blocks away from the mosque.
The three killed at the mosque were Amin Abdullah, 51, Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57.
Jewish leaders across the country and in San Diego widely condemned the attack.
The 74-page manifesto, which contains a section written by each shooter, reveals a wide-ranging hatred rooted in white Christian nationalist ideas, including Great Replacement Theory, and fueled by the two teenagers’ own social alienation. Among the other groups attacked in the document are Muslims, women, Black people, gay and transgender people, and immigrants.
But the shooters’ deepest resentment seemed reserved for Jewish people.
‘The universal enemy’
The manifesto listed previous antisemitic shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and Chabad of Poway among the teens’ many sources of inspiration, calling the assailant in the latter incident a “saint.” It called the Jews “the children of Satan.” It denied the Holocaust as a “complete fabrication.” Vazquez called Adolf Hitler his hero; in his section, Clark wrote out the Fourteen Words, a neo-Nazi declaration.
“Everyone has their own idea of who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” Vazquez wrote in a section titled “The Universal Enemy.”
He printed his answer to the question four times in a row in all capital letters: “It’s the Jews.”
Authorities have said the shooters met online before realizing they both lived in the San Diego area, without specifying the platform where they met.
But the document’s cover pages also provided a clue to their radicalization, bearing the insignia of Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that emerged during the first Trump administration.
Atomwaffen members are part of a network of mostly online extremist groups that subscribe to “accelerationism,” the idea that forcing societal collapse through an all-out race war is the only way to restore white supremacy and save civilization. The idea is propounded by a white nationalist named James Mason, author of a book called Siege that both shooters cited.
“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations there are many I support, I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea,” Vazquez wrote.
Atomwaffen members have been convicted in previous antisemitic murders. In 2019, one named Samuel Woodward lured a gay and Jewish college student named Blaze Bernstein to an Orange County park before stabbing him to death. Woodward, who was 20 at the time, is now serving a life sentence, and Atomwaffen fractured into other groups in the years after his arrest.
Secondary targets
Whereas the shooters were unsparing toward Jews in the manifesto, with Vazquez calling them the “most evil creature in the world,” they espoused mixed feelings about Muslims in the document before they killed three. “I don’t hate Muslims, at least not really,” Vazquez wrote. “What I hate is the religion of Islam itself and them invading my country.”
He added that Islam “is completely contradictory to both Western morals and values and Christianity.”
But he wrote only three paragraphs about Islam and Muslims — about one page — before the section ends with the word “unfinished” in brackets.
Clark appeared more committed to the eradication of Islam in his writing. Muslims and Jews, he said, “must be isolated and exterminated.” Yet he, like Vazquez, wrote several pages denigrating Jewish people.
The shooters did not state why they ultimately targeted a mosque. Vazquez wrote their plan was to “cause as much death and destruction” as fast as possible with a “diverse” selection of targets. The document provides lines for listing three separate locations, but none of them are filled out.
“All locations were surveyed and mapped out to the best of our ability,” he wrote.
The post ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto appeared first on The Forward.
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Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism
Rep. Dan Goldman of New York and his primary challenger Brad Lander are wading into the contentious debate over a proposed boycott of Israeli products at a Brooklyn cooperative grocery store ahead of an expected vote next week.
In a statement shared exclusively with the Forward on Wednesday, Goldman urged members of the popular Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn to attend a May 26 vote and cast ballots against the boycott resolution — and condemned the measure as antisemitic.
“Everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government — which I do not hesitate to do — but joining a movement that was founded on the principle of the elimination of Israel will have no impact on the Israeli government or the Israeli economy,” Goldman said in his statement. “Instead, it only succeeds at shifting the responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions to American Jews — which is quintessential antisemitism.”
Goldman said that he is aligning himself with Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a progressive leader, as the debate has spilled into local politics and Jewish communal life in the progressive neighborhood.
The resolution says the boycott would persist “Until Israel complies with international law, including by ceasing unlawful discriminatory practices, in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Timoner addressed the proposal in her weekly Shabbat sermon earlier this month.
“Many simply want to see the Palestinian people be free and safe and equal, and I do too, but this is not the way,” Timoner said. “This way is wrong.
Calling it a “proxy war” to what has been dividing Americans in recent years over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one “that is laced with antisemitism, Timoner said that many members of her congregation — she and herself — would be forced to resign from their co-op membership if the resolution passes.
The rabbi’s sermon reflected the careful line she has tried to walk since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza — openly criticizing Israeli government policies while rejecting the singling out of Israel. In March 2024, Timoner attended for the first time what was then a weekly protest to call for a bilateral ceasefire and hostage deal, one that Lander attended regularly. In her remarks she said that she had held back until then from calling for a ceasefire in Gaza “because it was being used by people who celebrated Oct. 7, people who do not hold Hamas responsible, and people who want to eliminate the state of Israel — and I did not want to be associated with that.”
Timoner is a co-founder and board member of the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group formed in 2020 to be a voice for liberal Jews in New York. Lander is a member of NYJA’s leaders network. A Goldman campaign official noted that the congressman and Timoner have met several times privately to discuss issues affecting the district and that Goldman has attended services at Beth Elohim in the past.
Goldman, the two-term incumbent, challenged his Democratic primary rival to publicly oppose the measure as well, “to stand with our neighbors, and make it clear that this dangerous bigotry has no place in our city.”
Lander, a close ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told the Forward he isn’t a member of the Coop but would vote against the resolution if he were, pointing to Timoner’s sermon. “Principled people can disagree here,” Lander said in a statement that did not take a position on the resolution. “Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are legitimate tools of advocacy campaigns. Unlike my opponent, I don’t believe all opposition to Israel is antisemitic.”
A long-running boycott fight
The proposal to boycott Israeli products has riven the Brooklyn institution’s roughly 16,000 members. It was introduced in 2024 by a local advocacy group called Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine. The resolution would require the Coop to boycott Israeli-made products “until Israel complies with international law in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Coop4Unity, opposing the resolution, is urging shoppers to “bring back cooperation” and “stop polarization.”
The measure is largely symbolic, given that the Coop only carries a handful of items imported from Israel, like EcoLove shampoo and conditioner. At least one, Al Arz tahini, is made by an Israeli Arab in Nazareth. The coop first considered a boycott resolution in 2012.
The debate has grown increasingly heated in recent months, erupting most recently publicly during a general meeting when a member made said “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country,” a remark that many attendees and Jewish organizations condemned.
The comment — which received applause at the meeting — came during a second resolution that would lower the voting threshold for boycott measures from 75% to 51%.
Goldman strongly condemned the remarks in his statement on Wednesday. “That is not a critique of Israeli policy or advocacy for Palestinian rights,” he said. “It is an old and ugly antisemitic conspiracy theory that fueled the Nazis and then was used by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.”
A heated primary over support for Israel
The boycott fight is the latest issue in an already heated primary challenge to Goldman being largely battled over Israel and antisemitism.
Last month, Lander, who has described himself as a liberal Zionist, joined some progressive House members in calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Lander — who described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” — said he would apply that as well to Israel’s defensive Iron Dome system, high-tech missile interception that protects lives, property and infrastructure against assaults from Iran and allied groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Lander said that Israel has the ability to purchase its defense with its own funds.
The 10th Congressional District, which includes Borough Park and Park Slope in Brooklyn as well as parts of lower Manhattan, voted heavily for Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. Mamdani is backing Lander in the primary.
Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and former Trump impeachment prosecutor who was elected in 2022, is aligned with the mainstream positions of national Democrats on Israel: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence.
Recent polling has shown Goldman trailing Lander in the June 23 primary.
Goldman framed the Coop dispute as about something larger than electoral politics. “It’s time we unite together on this issue,” he said, “and fight for the safe, loving, inclusive community we all deserve.”
Additional reporting by Mira Fox.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir draws criticism from Netanyahu for video taunting detained flotilla activists
(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined a chorus of Israelis and Jews denouncing his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for posting a video that showed Ben-Gvir taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that had been intercepted by the Israeli navy.
“Welcome to Israel, we are the masters,” Ben-Gvir said in the video as he waved a large Israeli flag above the detained activists, who could be seen blindfolded and kneeling on the ground with their hands behind their backs.
Roughly 430 activists that took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Turkey last Thursday, were brought to the city of Ashdod aboard Israeli naval ships on Wednesday, marking the latest in a long-running series of confrontations between Israel and activists seeking to break its naval blockade of Gaza.
In a second video posted on social media, Ben-Gvir said that the activists “came here all full of pride like big heroes. Look at them now,” appealing to Netanyahu to grant him permission to imprison them.
ככה אנחנו מקבלים את תומכי הטרור
Welcome to Israel 🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/7Hf8cAg7fC
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) May 20, 2026
Netanyahu said in a statement that he had instructed authorities to deport the activists “as soon as possible.” But he also offered a public rebuke of Ben-Gvir.
“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “However, the way that Minister Ben Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”
The foreign ministers of several countries, including Canada, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Italy, also condemned the videos and summoned their Israeli diplomats to answer for the display.
But some of the sharpest criticism came from within Israel, where Ben-Gvir plays a crucial role in maintaining the governing coalition while also engaging in antics that threaten to flare tensions and undercut the country’s claims that it behaves in accordance with international law.
Ben-Gvir is “not the face of Israel,” tweeted Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in English.
“You knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display — and not for the first time,” Saar wrote. “You have undone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people — from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry staff and many others.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos come as his antics and rhetoric have drawn new scrutiny in recent days. Last week, he departed from longstanding norms and waved an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount, a Muslim holy site, in a show of Jewish supremacy. His oversight of Israeli prisons, where he has said he wants to see prisoners given only the minimum of food and comfort as required by law, also drew attention because of a New York Times column alleging sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Progressive groups heavily criticized Ben-Gvir’s video, saying that it was inappropriate for him to be part of the Israeli government.
“The disgusting images of Israel’s National Security Minister abusing detainees from the Gaza flotilla are not just bad optics,” tweeted Mickey Gitzin, the acting CEO of the New Israel Fund. “A government that gives a Kahanist this kind of power has already abandoned any notion of decency. These grotesque images are the real face of current Israeli policy.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos showing the treatment of participants in the latest flotilla offered a contrast to other recent interceptions in which Israel has released footage appearing to show activists being treated without force. When past arrestees from flotillas have alleged abusive treatment, Israel has denied it.
The organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla said all of its boats had been intercepted by Israel by Tuesday evening, accusing Israel of employing “illegal, high-seas aggression.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry said no live munition was used during the operation, which it said was necessary because it will “not permit any breach of the lawful naval blockade on Gaza.”
Among the activists aboard the more than 50 boats in the flotilla was the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly. On Tuesday, Connolly, who was elected in October and has a record of anti-Israel rhetoric, called the detention of Irish activists aboard the flotilla “unacceptable.”
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