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Thomas Friedman explains how devastating Israel’s attacks on Iran have been
By BERNIE BELLAN I’m not sure how many readers follow Thomas Friedman’s writing in the New York Times; after all, he’s been highly critical of Netanyahu for years, which probably makes him persona non grata for a lot of you.
But, on Tuesday, November 26, Friedman wrote a piece that was so particularly incisive – and came across as so laudatory of what Israel has been able to achieve in the past 13 months, that even diehard Friedman critics should be able to take some very meaningful lessons away from that column.
Toward the beginning of what he wrote, Friedman makes what, for most readers of his columns, would probably be perceived as a fairly shocking statement when he writes: “In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop.”
He goes on to describe what Israel has been able to do to Hezbollah in the past few months as so destructive of that terrorist organization’s abilities that “Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel.”
Friedman then provides some very interesting information about how effective two attacks Israel launched against Iran – one in April and then one in October, were, both in inflicting tremendous damage to Iran’s capability to defend itself against a full scale Israeli attack – should one be launched, and in undermining Iran’s confidence that it can continue to arm Hezbollah without severe repercussions.
Here is what Friedman wrote:
“There is a reason for this (Hezbollah’s agreeing to a cease fire). Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
“A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise.’ And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.’ “
Friedman’s column goes on to offer advice to President-elect Trump how to deal with other changing realities in the world, including the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development in which, Friedman points out, Israelis are playing a leading role. But one has to wonder whether anyone in Trump’s circle bothers to read anything written by Friedman. After all, he was very close to President Biden – which would certainly put him into Trump’s enemies’ camp, on top of which he writes for that most hated of all media: The New York Times.
Still, if someone who is as critical of Israel’s government as Friedman has been is capable of pointing out the vastly changed dynamic now permeating the entire Middle East as a result of the huge blows Israel has inflicted both on Iran’s number one proxy in the region – Hezbollah, and on Iran itself, once can more readily understand how Israel’s strategy of taking on different enemies all at the same time has paid off.
I, for one, will admit that I was quite surprised to read Friedman’s analysis – and it leads me to question my own thoughts as to what would happen when Israel opened up a new front in Lebanon at the same time as it was still engaged in Gaza. I had thought that it might lead to a repeat of the 2006 debacle, in which a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon led to heavy Israeli losses and what was, in effect, a victory for Hezbollah – not by being able to defeat Israel, but simply by surviving that invasion.
This time around though – and we’ll have to wait for military analysts to tell us just how effective the heavy Israeli bombardment of Lebanese areas has been in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Israel has managed to keep its own casualties relatively low by relying upon bombing of Hezbollah infrastructure. As has been the case in Gaza, however, it’s so difficult to tell what those devastating bombings have actually accomplished in specific terms beyond realizing that they have thoroughly degraded both Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capacities. It seems though that the aphorism that “the sum is greater than its parts” is particularly apt in describing what the Israel Air Force has been able to achieve.
While we have been witnessing the wholesale destruction of civilian areas – in both Gaza and Lebanon, it now seems evident that Israeli intelligence has been able to locate terrorist locations with tremendous accuracy. The fact that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been so thoroughly embedded within civilian population areas made it inevitable that, once the IAF embarked upon a relentless campaign to destroy terrorist infrastructure and locations where terrorists were embedded within the civilian population, there would be huge civilian casualties – but ultimately Israel would be able to degrade both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fighting abilities to the point where they have both been neutralized in large part.
The question, of course, is what will now happen as a result of Friedman himself describing Israel’s having forced Hezbollah and Iran to “delink” themselves from Hamas. Hamas is, in effect, nothing more than a mafia type organization, now terrorizing the Palestinian population in Gaza, with its own survival now being its purpose. The Israel Defence Forces seem content to let Hamas carry on its campaign of looting aid trucks and terrorizing the population for its own benefit.
But Hamas fighters, however many may remain, don’t have the same option as Hezbollah’s fighters – which is to retreat behind a defined line north of the Litani River in Lebanon. How many are in the tunnels? How many are embedded within the rest of the Gaza population? If the IDF has an idea what the answers to those questions are, I haven’t seen them.
So, the war in Gaza will likely carry on for some time. It appears that the bombing campaign has thoroughly reduced Hamas’s ability to carry on any effective strikes on Israeli targets, but it is not clear at what point the Israeli government might be willing to accept any sort of a ceasefire. The government’s position has been that a ceasefire can only be entered into when at least the majority of the hostages are released, but frankly, Israel is now operating from such a position of strength vis-a-vis Hamas, that the idea of accepting a ceasefire that would allow Hamas fighters to remain in place seems unconscionable to the vast majority of Israelis. It may seem perverse to think that the government has been willing to sacrifice hostages’ lives for the sake of dealing a final, crushing blow to Hamas, but that’s the sad reality.
Still, who would have thought that Israel would be able to wage successful wars on so many fronts? As Thomas Friedman has noted, Israel has upended the situation in the Middle East, albeit at a very heavy price. And even though I’ve been questioning from the outset the Israeli government’s strategy of seeking total victory over Hamas, given how thoroughly Israel has been able to undermine Hezbollah’s and Iran’s positions, perhaps I was wrong to question Netanyahu’s goal of thoroughly crushing Hamas. Credit has to be given though to the IDF and how much they learned from previous wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Amidst all this though, one has to feel great sympathy for the people of Gaza. They are being held to ransom by a gang of thugs and there does not appear to be any way out for them. For their sake, let’s hope that Israel can “finish the job” quickly, although how that can be done remains difficult to know. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who is always so thoughtful and insightful, can shed some answers to that question as well.
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Exclusive: As Ceasefire Extended, Iranian Voice Describes Deepening Repression, Waning Hope Under Regime’s Grip
People attend the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As a fragile ceasefire halting the US-Israeli military campaign in Iran continues, some Iranians say the pause in fighting has not brought relief but rather fear that the regime is regaining strength while internal repression intensifies.
In western Iran, a former schoolteacher who asked to be identified as “Maddie Ali” for security reasons says the ceasefire has left many ordinary citizens feeling abandoned and exposed, watching authorities tighten control while hopes for meaningful change fade.
“People actually felt more hopeful when the war was ongoing. Now, with the ceasefire in place, many feel discouraged and disappointed about the future, which feels increasingly uncertain,” Ali told The Algeminer in an exclusive interview.
Ali lost her job after authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout when fighting erupted earlier this year — a disruption that continues to shape daily life and restrict communication with the outside world, effectively cutting millions of Iranians off from independent reporting on the war and access to global news.
Internet access remains unstable across much of the country, forcing many people to rely on illegal black-market virtual private networks (VPNs) — tools that bypass government censorship — to stay connected beyond Iran’s borders, with access reportedly costing millions of tomans per gigabyte. (A toman is one-tenth of the rial, the official currency of Iran.)
Iran’s nationwide internet blackout has become the longest recorded of its kind, as authorities continue restricting access to the outside world in an effort to suppress internal opposition and silence domestic dissent.
Iranian authorities have even warned that citizens suspected of accessing the internet through VPNs could face arrest or imprisonment. According to state media reports, Iranian security forces have arrested several citizens in recent weeks for using the Starlink satellite internet system, which allows users to bypass state-controlled terrestrial infrastructure.
Human rights groups have warned that the regime repeatedly uses nationwide internet shutdowns as a tool to intensify its crackdown on opposition movements and conceal ongoing abuses from international scrutiny.
Ali said many people in Iran fear the ceasefire is giving authorities time to regroup and rebuild.
“People are deeply disappointed that the US and Israeli sides agreed to a ceasefire without taking the Iranian population into account,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “The regime has repeatedly proven its capacity to rebuild and recover time and time again.”
The US–Iran ceasefire, which took effect on April 8, was initially set to expire on Wednesday night if no agreement was reached. US President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Monday that he was “highly unlikely” to extend the truce without a deal with Tehran.
“I’m not going to be rushed into making a bad deal,” the president said.
On Tuesday, however, Trump announced that he was extending the ceasefire indefinitely, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end the war.
In a statement on social media, Trump said he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated the talks, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Noting Iran’s government was “seriously fractured,” Trump said the US military would remain ready and continue its blockade on Iranian ports but continue abiding by the ceasefire “until such time as [Tehran’s] proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
According to Ali, who spoke with The Algemeiner before Trump’s announcement, reconstruction efforts began quickly after the fighting stopped, even as widespread infrastructure damage remained and internal repression intensified.
“There is frustration that the ceasefire may help the regime recover,” she said. “They started reconstruction for damaged sites and internal repression is still going on.”
Ali also said security forces remain highly visible across the country, especially after a sweeping crackdown earlier this year following mass demonstrations.
“We don’t have an option to really be out on the streets right now. It is really hard because of what happened in January. People are too afraid,” she said, referring to the nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving tens of thousands of demonstrators tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
Checkpoints and surveillance now shape daily movement across many areas of the country.
“There are security forces on the streets stopping people, checking phones to see who they have been in contact with and reviewing messages — and they even make arrests,” Ali said.
Despite the risks, Ali said frustration with the regime runs deep after years of sustained crackdowns and tightening control.
“Most Iranians want an end to this regime. People are exhausted after decades of repression, arrests, executions, surveillance, and control,” she said. “Everybody was waiting for Israel and the US to do something and help us.”
“At the same time, people don’t support war itself — they support removing the regime, which is deeply rooted throughout the country,” Ali continued.
She said many Iranians initially saw the outbreak of fighting as a rare opening for change after years of failed internal protest movements.
“When the war began, many people actually felt hopeful,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “It’s not that they didn’t try to overthrow the regime themselves before — they did. But nothing worked.”
Even those who opposed the war, she said, are not necessarily defending the government.
“Those who were against the war mostly believed it would not lead to real change in the end — not that they supported the regime,” she explained.
More broadly, Ali said many citizens viewed outside military pressure as a necessary catalyst rather than something they welcomed.
“For many Iranians, support for the US and Israeli strikes came out of necessity and exhaustion — not because they support war,” she said.
Despite significant leadership losses during the conflict, Ali said the regime’s structure remains deeply entrenched nationwide.
“The regime and its ideology are embedded at every level — in cities, towns, and institutions across the country,” she said.
“From what we can see, the system is still functioning almost completely intact,” she continued. “It remains coordinated at both the national and local levels, and internal repression is actually increasing.”
“It feels suffocating and extreme, but at the same time it isn’t surprising,” she added.
For some inside Iran, Ali said, this reality has reshaped how people understand the scale of effort needed to dismantle the regime’s entrenched security apparatus.
“People support Israel and the United States, but they also believe airstrikes alone are not enough,” she said.
“Many believe that only a military ground intervention with troops on the ground could remove the regime from its roots,” she continued.
At the same time, she said many Iranians feel especially frustrated by what they see as political solidarity between Muslim-majority governments and Tehran’s leadership rather than support for ordinary citizens.
“Just because a government presents itself as Islamist does not give it the right to repress dissidents and crush its own people,” she said.
“Many Muslim countries have continued to cooperate with this regime, shaking hands with a killer regime instead of standing with the Iranian people,” Ali added.
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Netanyahu heckled at Israel’s official Memorial Day ceremony as bereaved families grasp for comfort
(JTA) — TEL MOND, Israel — Thousands of Israelis gathered in cemeteries all over Israel to commemorate the nation’s fallen soldiers and terror victims on Memorial Day, as public mourning collided with political anger, fresh wartime uncertainty and the private aftershocks consuming bereaved families.
In a Memorial Day message to bereaved families, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also addressed the war against Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, saying Israel has “already removed an existential threat.”
A short while later, President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernan that he “expects to be bombing” Iran again if talks collapse ahead of Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline.
“We have returned all our hostages, struck our enemies hard, and made Israel a nation stronger than ever before,” Netanyahu said at an official Memorial Day ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
His comments prompted a heckler in the crowd to yell out, “Some of them died in tunnels,” in reference to the Israelis kidnapped to Gaza by the Hamas terror group and held underground.
Skirmishes broke out during a speech by MK Ofir Sofer, of the far-right Religious Zionist party at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv, when attendees attempted to snatch signs held up by protesters that read “Government of death” and “I refuse to hear words of comfort from a government of criminals.”
At a cemetery in Tel Mond, Eyal Golan, whose sister Shirel died by suicide on her 22nd birthday, a year after surviving the Nova massacre near the Gaza border, also had harsh words for the government.
Reflecting on Knesset debates he attended after his sister’s death, as he pushed for a law in her name to provide unlimited, comprehensive mental health care to victims of terror, Golan said he was furious at what he described as the performative behavior of politicians from both the coalition and opposition.
“Off camera, they speak to each other normally,” he said. “But the moment the cameras turn on, it’s showtime. They fall into their roles, shouting and attacking each other. I’m sitting there thinking, how can this be real?”
“Instead of coming together, they just deepen the divide,” he said, but he credited two Knesset members from opposite sides of the political aisle — Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism and Merav Michaeli of Labor — with taking up the cause and advancing the legislation.
Eyal and other members of his family say the government failed Shirel as she grappled with acute PTSD in the months after the attack. Now advancing the bill, he said he hopes it will spare other families the same fate.
“The whole point of my crusade is to save others. No one will be able to bring back my sister. If I’m able to save one more soul, I’ve done my job,” he said.
The legislation, known informally as the Shirel Golan law, passed a preliminary reading in January 2026.
Sitting close to his daughter’s grave, covered in flowers, wreaths and candles, Eyal’s father Meir said he has fallen into a strange nightly ritual. Every night, he wakes up at 3 a.m. and makes himself a cup of coffee. He opens the smart TV to her YouTube account and for an hour or so watches the videos she had liked and subscribed to, including trance music emblematic of the Nova scene. At 4 a.m., he returns to bed.
“As soon as I turn it on, it says, ‘Hello Shirel, welcome back,’” Meir said, adding that it gives him a measure of tranquility, as if his daughter “is still around.”
Later, as Eyal made the 45-minute drive back to his home in the central Israeli city of Holon, he described the journey as the emotional hinge between mourning and the return to ordinary life.
“It’s a kind of magic hour during which I store the grief of the day in a box in my mind,” he said. “By Independence Day, I’ll go back to my main role, being a father to two daughters.”
He added, “That journey is a microcosm of Israeli society.”
Meir’s late-night visits to his daughter’s digital world are part of a wider private language of mourning that has taken hold among bereaved Israeli families, many of whom continue to reach for their dead through screens. On phones across the country, especially on the popular messaging platform WhatsApp, parents and siblings keep sending messages to loved ones who were killed, writing as if the conversation never ended. The messages, some of which were recorded in a special Memorial Day project by the Ynet news site, come at unguarded moments, during a football game, before a birthday, or in the middle of the night.
“What a goal, Yahav,” one father, Nir Maayan, wrote to his son, Yahav, who was killed in Gaza in January of last year.
Texting his son from his graveside, Nir wrote: “There are days of collapse, of longing, of not being able to accept reality. Moments when I try to imagine your final moments. What did you think? What did you feel? Answers I will never know. So I just rest my head on you, and somehow you comfort me and hold me. Someone is watching over me from above.”
“Tomorrow is your birthday, send mom a message,” a sister wrote to her deceased brother.
“The sky is beautiful today,” another wrote.
Dorit Ron keeps on texting her son Itai, who was killed on Oct. 7 at the Nahal Oz base near the Gaza border. “I expect an answer, a sign that he’s okay and with his father,” she said, according to the report. “Even though I know he won’t reply, to me he’s alive, just nearby, in another dimension.”
The post Netanyahu heckled at Israel’s official Memorial Day ceremony as bereaved families grasp for comfort appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon, installs a new one
(JTA) — An Israeli soldier who bludgeoned a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon and another soldier who photographed the act have both been dismissed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military detention, the Israeli military said on Monday.
“The IDF expresses deep regret over the incident and emphasizes that its operations in Lebanon are directed solely against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and other terrorist groups, and not against Lebanese civilians,” the IDF said in a statement.
The military also announced it had replaced the damaged statue with a new one “in full coordination with the local community of Debel in southern Lebanon.” The town is a Christian enclave within a region that is a Hezbollah stronghold.
A short while ago, in full coordination with the local community of Debel in southern Lebanon, the damaged statue was replaced by IDF troops. The Northern Command worked to coordinate the replacement of the statue from the moment it received the report of the incident.
The IDF… pic.twitter.com/nGh1s1iia1
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 21, 2026
Photos of the incident, which depicted the soldier striking an overturned Jesus statue, were quickly condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF as they spread on Sunday.
By Monday, a letter condemning the act had drawn over 80 signatures by prominent Jewish leaders, including former Israeli cabinet minister Michael Melchior; American antisemitism activist Shabbos Kestenbaum; and Orthodox rabbis in Israel and the United States.
“This act is a chillul Hashem — a desecration of God’s name,” the letter said. “It is an affront to the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East and to Christians all over the world. It is a vile betrayal of the Jewish values upon which the State of Israel was founded. And it is a wound inflicted upon the fragile Jewish-Christian friendship that is more important than ever.”
The announcement of the punishment comes as the IDF said it was probing an incident in the West Bank in which a reservist soldier reportedly killed two Palestinians, aged 14 and 32.
The post Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon, installs a new one appeared first on The Forward.