School of War - Michael Oren: October 7 and the Cost of Defending Israel

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Three years after October 7, the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history looms large over the Jewish state’s upcoming election. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren says whomever takes the helm next is unlikely to “remove a single soldier from Lebanon, from Gaza, from Syria.” Today, Oren joins School of War to discuss Israel’s “80 percent” consensus on national security, why he thinks Hezbollah “cannot be destroyed militarily,” and the deepening political divide between religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Jews over the Jewish state’s future.  3:33 How October 7 Changed Israel 8:54 The Ultra-Orthodox Draft Fight 13:52 Israel’s Election and the Draft 17:17 Why the Ultra-Orthodox Don’t Serve 19:17 Oren's Path to the IDF 24:45 How Israel Defeated Hezbollah 26:50 Israel’s New Security Consensus 29:58 Can Iran Survive the Blockade? 32:40 What Comes Next in Gaza? 34:52 Hunting the October 7 Terrorists 37:02 Why Michael Oren Chose Israel 41:11 What Happens if Iran’s Regime Falls? This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com. This episode of School of War is also brought to you by Stratolaunch, a leading pure-play hypersonics company.  Stratolaunch helps the U.S. and its allies move new hypersonic technologies from concept to capability, faster and cheaper.  Learn more about how Stratolaunch is accelerating the future of hypersonics at Stratolaunch.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the front line today. Maven Smart System isn't just software you use. It's the platform you build on. Every day, thousands of uniformed service members use AI coding agents to build their own agentic applications across all warfighting functions on top of the DOW's integrated ontology. What once took a contract in a year, now takes a warfighter and an afternoon. Administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. One platform deployed everywhere at all classifications.

Build at the speed of war. We are three years on from 10-7, three long and difficult years of war in the Middle East. What appears to the world as the core strategic dilemma of that war for Israel, having troops on the ground in places like Gaza and Lebanon buys local security, but comes at a steep cost of international isolation, is less of a dilemma in the Israeli political debate than you might think. To discuss this and other aspects of these violent years, there's no one better to have on School of War than Michael Oren.

He's a brilliant historian, his book on Israel's Six-Day War is a deserved classic, and one of the first books I read on the military history of the Middle East as a young man. But he's also a combat veteran as a paratian. trooper in Israel's 1982 war in Lebanon, and he served again in Lebanon in 2006 and incredibly yet again during the post-107 wars. He's also a statesman serving at one point as Israel's ambassador to the United States. We talk high strategy, but also personal histories in this episode, and in particular how my guest's life and decision to serve in the IDF was conditioned by his father's World War II service in the U.S. Army. It's a great conversation. Let's get into it.

It is a prescription for war. The Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live. The experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situations in France. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall never threaten. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Michael Orrin, he's the former Israeli ambassador to the United States. He has a PhD from Princeton University, an historian author of many books. I first became a fan, this is a long time ago now, of your book Six Days of War, which I read as a young guy right when it came out as just a phenomenal history of the Six Day War

and just a phenomenal work of history writing. And I'm thrilled to have you on the show. I am delighted to be with you, Aaron. I'm a huge fan of School of War, and I never miss an episode. Well, there's so much we can talk about today, never a dull moment in the Middle East. And, of course, this week is also a somber moment because we are coming up here. This episode will air just a day before the three-year anniversary of October the 7th. And I wanted to start us with a very broad question, which is, what has changed about Israel since October the 7th, 2023, but also what has stayed the same?

It's funny, but among Israelis, we actually don't have a name for this war. There's an official name, which is swords of iron, but nobody calls it that. It's just known as the war. And we all divide our lives between our lives before the war, before October 7, 2023, and after it. And it's a very sharp, distinct divide between the two. And if we look back at the period before the war, the tremendous protest against the government's proposed judicial reform program, great divisions with Israeli society. With all that, we sort of look back longingly, almost nostalgically to what our world was before October 7th and what has been since then, because

this war continues. It's not over. And anybody tells you how anybody knows how this war is going to end. In fact, nobody knows entirely too early. But it has transformed Israel in fundamental, profound, and irreversible ways. One of them is particularly strategic. Israel will never again allow a large terrorist force to amass on its borders, whether it's in Gaza or Lebanon, will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Irrespective what the United States policy will be, Israel will always act to prevent Iran from getting that type of weaponry. So that's a profound change. Their internal political changes, the big issue coming up to our elections versus we're an election season is going to be whether ultra-Orphodox Israeli Jews will be drafted into

the Israeli army. They've been exempted since Israel's creation. in 1948, and now they're a very huge population. And that was an issue which on October 6, 2003, was mostly a radical left-wing issue, and now it's a national issue, which is actually be championed by the religious right-wing Israeli Zionists. The people wear sort of a knit skull cap, a knit key pop, because they have paid disproportionately for this war. Roughly half of our military fatalities in this war have been religious Zionists.

And they say to the author's orthodox, say, hey, we don't get it. We're reading the same Bible that you're reading. Our Bible tells us, we have to fight. How is it that your Bible says you don't have to fight? We don't get that. That's a huge issue, a tremendous transformation in this society. And I think we're dealing with long-term impacts of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which has impacted the entire generation of Israelis.

You know, on October 7th and 8th of 2003, the Israeli army called up something in the order of 360,000, thousand Israelis, which would be the equivalent to about 11 million Americans. Can you imagine 11 million Americans reporting for duty overnight? Not overnight, but I've read about it. It happened in the middle of the 20th century. That's about it. That is somewhat somewhat, about 16 million Americans fought in World War II. So you have the idea of the proportion here. But there was a study done in World War II that a combat soldier after 40 days of uninterrupted combat is no longer functional. Basically, and I'm quoting this, it goes into a vegetative state. We're talking about Israeli soldiers who have fought for hundreds of days in almost interrupted combat and in combat situations

that no other army in history ever encountered, where you're dealing with in Gaza alone, an enemy of roughly 30,000 terrorists who are deeply embedded in a population of 2.2 million civilians with really no place to run away, very little. And not only they're fighting a battle above the ground, they're fighting a battle below the ground with something between the order of between 350 and 400 miles of tunnels. No one ever has come remotely close to that. I've heard in your and your podcast, people have talked about America's experience in Iraq, fighting in Mosul, fighting in Fallujah. They're the U.S. military, you know, no small group. I encountered about between 5 and 10,000 insurgents in cities that were largely deserted, with maybe a

a couple of miles of towels underneath. And those were brutal battles that went on for a long time. So these are a magnitude of challenge for a society, any society, which no other nation has ever encountered. And so this is also, again, profoundly impacted this society. And political upheavals, the hostage issue, which was a trauma for everybody in this country. Everybody knows somebody was a hostage. Certainly everybody knows people who were killed on October 7th.

the equivalent, we lost about 1,200 people on that day, the equivalent to about 41, 44,000 Americans. If you can imagine 44,000 Americans, God forbid, being killed in about a seven-hour period, that is the impact on the society. So I think it's going to be many, many years before we're going to know definitively just how this war has changed the society, in many ways, steeled the society, and we've seen evidence of that. And I think that also knowing this is an interesting point that should combat operations resume against Iran, and there's lots of talk about this in the United States, perhaps after the November 4th midterm elections, this country will be ready to go back into war.

And with all that entails for us, that means not just high gas prices, that means very large ballistic missiles falling on our neighborhoods. We're prepared to do that with the condition that this war actually brings about a change and the strategic threat posed to us by Iran. Well, there's so much there I want to ask more about. Let's start with this issue of the ultra-Orthodox and military service and how it intersects with Israeli politics and security. It's not something we really talked about on the show here before,

but as you note, it's an enormous issue in Israel itself. I would count myself amongst those who, you know, as somebody deeply sympathetic to Zionism and the state of Israel, but a non-Jewish friend and somebody without any kind of, you know, richer personal experience of Judaism. And so I think for the group of people of which I would count myself, one, this is one of the strangest issues to look at, especially post-October the 7th in, you know,

downstream of what was truly an existential threat to the state of Israel, a class of society that, you know, as part of the bargain of the foundation of the state, was exempted for military service when they were relatively small part of society, not a small part anymore. And yet, it seems incredibly dug in against the concept. And so far, keeping that original bargain, it's perplexing, it's strange to look at from afar. It seems to be profoundly, painfully divisive within Israel itself. How, what are the various ways in which this issue could play out? What do you think is going to happen? Well, let's just

understand it. It is an immensely complex issue. And I'll try to simplify as much as I can. The state of Israel is a modern, ostensibly secular country. It is Zionist, which was the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. It wasn't a religious movement per se, though many religious people are Zionists and see the creation of the Jewish state as a kind of divine intervention in Jewish history. But the ultra-Orthodox are people who basically look at Zionism and say, these are Jews arrogating the exclusive purview of God. which is to bring about the Messiah and bring about the redemption of the Jewish people. Only God can bring the Jewish people back to our ancient homeland here in the land of Israel. And so they are not Zionists.

Now, going back to 1948, 49, this is only three years after the Holocaust, our first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, decided to exempt as a number of ultra-Orthodox students who are studying sacred books from military service in order to replenish the great schools of Jewish learning that had been destroyed by Hitler during the Holocaust. At that time, you were talking about between 5 and 10,000 students at most. But as years passed,

and this is probably the population, which has the highest natural increase rate of any in the world, to have families of 5, 12 children is not unusual, tremendous population explosion among the ultra-Orthodox. And so now you're talking back in the order of hundreds of thousands. of ultra-to-orthodox students who are exempt from the army. And during this war, when, again, is really reservists,

are doing hundreds of days of reserve duty in active combat. And these religious students are sitting in their yeshivas, their religious schools, and not serving. And not even, in many in the cases, not even respecting the service of those people who are going out to risk their lives again and again. And that became a huge political issue. I'd say is the main issue in this election is ultra-o-elthodox service in the military. Now, many of your viewers will know this, but we do have universal conscription.

It's not a volunteer army as the United States Army is. Otherwise, if you're not ultra-orthodox or have some kind of physical or mental disability, you're going to serve at minimum, a man, three years, woman, two years. And if you're in various units, if you're a commando, it could be five, six years. if you're a pilot, it could be 12 years. And then you go into the reserves. So I serve as a paratrooper. And then I did active combat duty well into my 50s.

And believe it or not, at my very advanced age, I did a tour of combat duty in this war as well. And so, but that is not unusual. And when we look around and see that we, the Israelis, who are bearing the brunt of this, and others feel themselves that they have no responsibility and are exempt, that becomes, again, a deeply divisive issue in Israeli society. And so Prime Minister Netanyahu has managed to stay in power, in part because of his maintenance of this compromise. Is it basically, if the election goes to Netanyahu,

it stays this way and all of the kind of anger that's boiled up around it continues to boil. but then if he loses the election, it will break the other way, at which point you'll have to deal with what will be very dramatic process of imposing conscription on this population. Is that the basic road? At the risk of sounding like I'm dodging the question, it depends how you define winning the election because it depends on what the government is going to be. So what has happened in the recent years, certainly from the government that was formed before this war was heavily dependent on the ultra-Orthodox parties who are part of the the coalition. So they have leverage. Now, Netanyahu could remain crime minister, but could have a very different government. And that government would maybe diminish the power of these ultra-Orthodox parties, and there would be greater pressure on those parties to send their young people to serve. What happened just before this election cycle began was a law was passed in the Knesset that was going to exempt great numbers of these ultra-Orthodox students from the army. And a another law tried to immunize them from arrest as draft dodgers.

And that law was passed in the Knesset, but turned down by the Supreme Court as illegal. And that's how devices this is. So this is the cutting edge of what's going on here. And it is that rare, one of the rare issues, and it's really positive cuts completely across right and left. And there's another issue that cuts across right and left. in this campaign, which is also completely unique in the history of Israeli politics, is whether the state will investigate the failures of October 7th with an independent judicial commission, or a state commission, as is called, or a politically appointed commission.

Now, Prime Minister, now, and this government wants a politically appointed commission. But the majority of Israelis want a state-appointed commission. They want an independent commission. They don't see how the government can investigate itself. And again, it cuts across right and left because Hamas on October 7th just didn't kill just left-wing Israelis. It didn't kill right-wing Israelis. It killed religious and secular Israelis. It did not distinguish.

And it's Hamas, I wouldn't call it a failure to distinguish yet. Basically, it's insistence on not distinguishing what Jews it killed have created issues, which for the first time, I think, in the annals of Israeli politics, have created. politics have created multi-partisan issues. This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. Maven isn't an app. It's a builder ecosystem. Right now, across the joint force, thousands of uniform service members are pointing AI coding

agents at their hardest problems and building the tools they need themselves, targeting workflows, intel products, battle management. No ticket, no vendor, no wait. The warfighter closest to the fight is now the one building for it. That's how you fight at the speed of war. One last question on this issue of the orthodox, and I promise we'll move on, but it is fascinating to me. When leaders of this community are sort of challenged with the obvious logic, much of what you've already pointed to, look, our enemies will kill you just the same. is they'll kill those who are serving. And by the way, have you looked at the broad world lately? Where are you really going to go if Israel starts to run into real trouble? What is their response?

What do they base their, what is the rational defense of their position? Well, I wouldn't as they call it rational. It's spiritual. They are people who are, you know, probably the only populace of the world, which is voluntarily impoverished for what they believe. They have no crime, by the way, and their populace. There's so many, there many admiral qualities about the ultra-Orthodox, but they believe that their prayer, their study, is as important, if not more important, in defending the state of Israel than the Israel defense forces. And their response, Aaron will be, God, God, will save us. Very well. Very well. I want to talk a bit about the north of Israel, about the fighting currently in Lebanon. And then you have personal experience

of that area of campaigning from your youth as a perjurer back in 1982. I was up in the north of Israel back in the end of 2024 where things were still quite deserted intense just as Israel was really beginning to mount its very successful campaign against Hezbollah back there in the fall. I was there before Assad fell in Syria. you wrote recently about the situation up there today in 2026, have things improved? Are they about the same? To me, it's a fascinating area to study. One, it doesn't get quite as much attention. I mean, Lebanon gets attention, but the situation, the north of Israel doesn't get quite as much attention internationally as probably it deserves. Two, it throws for me into sharp relief this constant dilemma of Israeli security in a way. It is the security dilemma, which is you go into a place like Lebanon, to build a barrier of support for a place like Northern Israel, and you earn all kinds of problems, endless problems.

You leave southern Lebanon, and you earn yet more problems. And it's just a classic dilemma. What's the situation in northern Israel now, and what is the road ahead in terms of Israeli action in Lebanon? Well, a quick autobiographical note. Rather unusually, the son of a U.S. American Jewish military family. My father was a career soldier in the U.S. military, landed on Normandy Beach, fought all through World War II.

My uncle was the in charge of physical standards for the Pentagon, a full bird colonel. So I could have a strong base of comparison between the U.S. military and the Israeli military. They are very, very different. We don't salute. We don't march. We call our officers by their first names. If we don't like them, we call them by our last names, if we do like them. And, yeah, you can't make this up.

It's very, very different. And, you know, often you go home for the weekend. father went off to World War II. He came home three years later. So it is very different. And it's part of our lives. It's just in a way that the American military, the culture is very separate from the American culture. There's no distinction between Israeli military culture and Israeli civilian culture, for better or for worse, by the way. And then my own relationship, I came to Israel a long time ago, right? In the 70s, I was what they called a lone soldier. My family was not here. I only wanted to be a paratrooper, tried out for a paratrooper. I was in

great shape hour. You don't know. The tryouts put me in the hospital for a week and then went into 18 months of basic training. It was very hard. And then as you mentioned, I fought in Lebanon the first war and then fought in the second Lebanon war. We didn't know the first one was going to be the first one until the second one. The first one in 1982 and I fought in Beirut. And then in 2006, a second Lebanon war. By that time, I was a military spokesman. And I'm an officer in the military and served almost 60 days in that war. It was a long war and several operations in Gaza. So I've been in several wars and interacting with the media also, and it gives me a certain perspective, but I have a very close relationship with the North. I was a cowboy and a kibbutz up there in my youth, and I've had a very close emotional connection.

And during the war, because just what you were saying, nobody was paying any attention to what was happening up north. I brought two delegations of northerners, just people, people who lived in different towns in Kibbutzim and these communal farms are brought them to Washington to meet with both houses of Congress, both parties. We met with President Biden's staff in the White House to try to raise awareness of what was happening up there. And what was happening up there was that on the, on October 8th, 2003, as Hezbollah opened fire on the north, completely unprovoked, by the way, on the orders of Iran, Israel decided to evacuate the population of northern Israel five kilometers from the border. And that was about 65,000 people. But, you know, a Kachusha rocket or a Skud rocket doesn't distinguish five kilometers from five kilometers in one meter.

and people beyond the five meters also fled. So something in the order of about 85,000 Israelis had to move from the north. And the north basically became uninhabitable. When you were up there, there were entire cities that were ghost cities. And, you know, if you have kids, you have family, you're going to move, not going to move up there

where these rockets are falling. People are getting killed. And it was, there was tremendous pressure on the government. I think, in fact, justify that to do something about Hezbollah. That could only happen after the Israeli army had gotten a handle on Gaza and basically the tide of the battle had switched there. And there's a close connection between the death of Sinwar, the assassination of Sinwar in Gaza and our ability to focus

then on Lebanon. And you know about the Pager operation, the walkie-talkie operation, which was very, very impressive, but probably not as significant to the fact that these really Air Force in a seven or eight-hour sortie, the long sortie, took out almost the entire front row of missile in Hezbollah's arsenal. You're talking about an arsenal about 200,000 rockets and then moved into southern Lebanon. But you're absolutely right. It creates a dilemma because this is a very tiny country, you know, besides New Jersey, if the northern half of it is rendered uninhabitable. And by the way, Hizbollah rockets can hit where I'm sitting here in Tel Aviv. You don't have to be up in the Galilee to be hit by a Hizbalah rocket. Then our neighbors will internalize that they

can pose an existential threat to this country and leave and render entire swaths of it, empty, of Israelis. And that's an intolerable situation for any sovereign country, certainly for this country. And so Israel went into Lebanon. It is staying in Lebanon. But, you know, the situation there is not static. Now, for the first time since my youth, since the 1980s, you have a Lebanese government that's willing to make peace with us. And I think a lot of credit has to be given to President Aoun, who's come out and said, I want to make peace with Israelis. Two of his president, processors tried that and were assassinated. It takes a lot of guts. And I think the Israel the army is willing to get out of southern Lebanon if the Lebanese army can prove it can guard that

border. But right now, Hezbollah remains still the preeminent military force in Lebanon, much bigger than the Lebanese army. And until Hisbalah is disarmed, however much that happens, the situation will not change dramatically in southern Lebanon and Israel will have a permanent military status there. And I will just add as sort of as an epilogue, Hezbollah cannot be destroyed militarily. We're not going to go back and running around the straits of Beirut again. It didn't work out so good the first time. The only way Hezbollah can be disarmed is by defeating the Islamic Republic of Iran and its regime and cutting off its, oxygen, cutting off its arms, cutting off its, its finances. That fall 2024 campaign of the IDF

and, you know, the Israeli security services broadly in Lebanon strikes me as one of the most remarkable feats of warfare, probably of the century so far. I mean, it was on a, you know, in terms of comparing it to the war in Ukraine and things like that, the scale was a bit smaller. But in terms of the success compared to the expectations prior to the campaign, I mean, it was just stunning, I don't have to tell you. You know, prior to October the 7th, prior to the war up there or the campaign up there in 2024, people spoke of a northern war in Israel in basically apocalyptic terms. You know, Tel Aviv was going to be in flames, you know, hypho, flattened,

you know, would be yet another quagmire on the ground. It's not to say that there are no challenges. It's not to say that there isn't, you know, by the nature of the strategy, protraction baked in. But the truth is that Hezbollah, as a battlefield force, was swiftly defeated. And by the way, then the Asatushim sort of fell in some level of connection as a kind of bonus or cherry on top. It was really quite incredible. But to your point about dilemmas and desertion, I mean, the more is this is the constant problem, isn't it? The more proactive and aggressive Israel is in terms of solving its security problems, the more. risks or indeed encounters isolation internationally. So you could make this point about Lebanon, you can make this point about Gaza. It sounds from the way you characterize things that the

basic attitude of bipartisan attitude, left and right in Israel right now, as well, so be it. If it's isolation, it's isolation because we have these immediate security concerns. Is that the consensus? Is there a debate on those issues? How do you think about that tension between military progress and immediate security concerns versus the international situation, the international diplomatic situation. That's an excellent question. It's one that's very, very infrequently understood in the West. And that is, you know, everyone looks at Benjamin Netanyahu, his government is being toxic.

He's, he's very aggressive, he's militaristic, he's a warmonger. He has a very different reputation in this country. This country is probably viewed as more hesitant and conflict diverse. but we do have this election. We have a number of the prominent candidates, Gadia Azenkata, former Chisov staff, Natali Bennett, a former prime minister, former defense minister, former defense minister,

Avigdra Lieberman. And they have strong policy disagreements, particularly about that ultra-Othox draft, but about what to do militarily, almost no difference. Anybody thinks that there's going to be a different Israeli government come October 27th, and we don't know what the outcome.

outcome this election is going to be. And that next government, if it's not the Netanyahu government, is going to remove a single soldier from Lebanon, move a single soldier from Gaza, move a single soldier from Syria now. We haven't talked about Syria, but we have Israeli forces there too. Or is going to sit passively while terrorist forces again build up on our borders or sit passively while Iran acquires nuclear weapons. They are making mistake. There'll be absolutely no change. No Israeli government is going to jeopardize the security of this country, creating a Palestinian state in Judean Samaria, the West Bank, or redividing Jerusalem, there'll be no change there. And understand that you're talking about a national consensus,

which is probably in the 80s percent of this country. And that doesn't mean there's wiggle room on certain issues, but on these issues, we are talking about the safety, security, and the lives of our children and grandchildren. And until anybody is willing to put their kids on the border with Lebanon or their kids on the border with Gaza and take those type of risks which by the way

I haven't found anybody is actually willing to do that then they have to understand that for us this is not a political issue it's not even a diplomatic issue it's a matter of life and death and I think our politicians

across the board understand this very very well you mentioned that there's really no solution to the extent there are solutions in international politics to the problem of Hezbollah in Lebanon so long as the Islamic Republic

remains the regime in Iran. They've taken a battering. They're still standing, but they've taken a real battering this year and last year. Their finances, even the New York Times, Michael, is running pieces

about how the finances of the Islamic Republic are in pretty bad shape at the moment because of the blockade and all kinds of things we talk about on School of War all the time. Have you detected a a weakening of Hezbollah's power, not just because they were defeated in the fall of 2024,

but, you know, since the 2025, 2026 conflicts with Iran is support for Hezbollah from Iran in Lebanon weakening? Are there detectable battlefield consequences of that? What do you actually see on the ground? They haven't seen it yet, but it's going to come. You know, I write frequently about the war in various forums. I had a column at the beginning of April now in Fox News saying that the model for the war against Iran shouldn't be Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be the cold war, and that the stage of major military operations should end and should be replaced by a naval blockade. And, you know, fortunately, I don't know if anybody was listening in the White House, they took that recommendation. And I think that naval blockade has proved very efficacious and costing the Iranian regime

something between $300 and $300 and $300 million per day. And we see the squeeze. We see the squeeze. Now, this could bring about a more flexible Iranian position at a negotiating table, not that Iranians A negotiated agreement actually means anything, but it could also bring about a provocation. I find it curious that the Iranians haven't been more aggressive in trying to provoke an American military response before November 4th to drive up oil prices again, generate further opposition to the war within the American public, both among the Republicans and the Democrats, and create a situation where the Republicans would lose one or two houses in that race in November 4th. and maybe they could strike a better deal with a more, I would say, flexible or amenable Congress. If that case, Israel, these are IDF remains very on high alert for that possibility precisely, precisely that possibility. Or that the Iran will try to hit a major American worship in the Middle East, somewhere in the Middle East and create that type of generate opposition within the United States. but the Iranian regime, it can hold out for a long time under a blockade, but it can't hold out indefinitely.

Barring an agreement where Iran gets major foreign investment, American investment and rebuilding, I think the Middle East has changed. Now, yes, Israel is very isolated in parts of the world. It's not isolated in India, is not isolated in Africa. It is not isolated now in South America. all right. By the way, Colombia, which under a previous government

cut off relations with Israel, just today cut off relations with Iran. And so we're not entirely isolated, but one of the places we are least isolated is in the Middle East, ironically. And I think that our neighbors know that in standing up to Iran, there's only one nation that's going to stand up to Iran

and stand up to their other existential threat, which is the Muslim brotherhood. And Israel is really the only country doing both. And I think that has long-term diplomatic and strategic ramifications. When we talk about isolation, Gaza obviously has become the major cause internationally of critics of Israel. I'm curious your view on the road ahead there, depending on the week, the Trump administration is very bullish. At any moment now, Hamas is going to lay down its weapons. and something like a pleasant seaside resort is going to be built on the coast there.

I've expressed some skepticism about that here and there over the last couple of years. Where do things stand? What are the prospects in Gaza for peace? I'm going to be very, you know, I'm going to be very candid with you about this. As much as we appreciate the immense efforts and success of the Trump administration in getting the hostages released and, you know, mediating a ceasefire, long-term ceasefire. I think that the Israeli public generally will be extremely loathe to remove a single soldier from Gaza.

And Israel now occupies about 63% of Gaza, unless Hamas completely disarms. And I don't mean putting their arms in a warehouse that's going to be under Palestinian technological technical control. Or they say giving up their heavy weapons, their tanks and artillery, which they have none. No one's going to do that. No one's that stupid. And no one's going to take that risk with their kids and grandkids. It's that simple. Right now, Israel's position, I think, is comfortable in Gaza because Hamas is not the shooting rockets at us again.

It is not sending forces to belong across the border, though it's still training forces to do that. Still training terrorists to do that. And every week, we are in the process of eliminating those terrorists who participate in October 7th. And here's another factor that I think that is insufficiently understood in the West. and it goes to the very raison d'ept of the state. The state was created to ensure the safety of the Jewish people, of its inhabitants. Now, we failed to do that on October 7th. We did.

But since then, Israelis must know that anyone who attacked, murdered, mutilated, raped, Israelis on October 7th will not escape, will not be immune, no matter how long it takes. This was the message of Goldemeyer after the Munich massacre in 1972, where the Mossad hunted down all those terrorists, and they met their end. And there's a unit purportedly in the Israeli intelligence and the Mossad that does precisely the same thing today.

And you see the results every week. And the pictures of these terrorists are published. They're published at Gaza. They're published here as well. And I think that's important for national morale. It's important for our national resilience to know that people who kill Israelis, kill Jews will not do so.

with impunity and certainly not with immunity in the long run. So right now that situation is comfortable in Gaza for Israel, but I know, and I've had discussions in the last week with people have worked on the Trump administrations, 20 points, there are 15 points, there's different plans that they would like to move ahead. They would actually like to see their vision of Gaza or rebuilt Gaza, Gaza under the auspices of the International Board of Peace under a technocratic Palestinian government, which is neither Palestinian Authority nor Hamas, they want to realize that goal. I think it's an admiral goal. It's an admiral goal. The question is, we are in the Middle East. And we have learned,

if we've learned anything from October 7th is that we can't take risks like that again. And while we'd like to see a peaceful Gaza, which, as you said, resembles, you know, the Mediterranean Riviera, no one's willing to take that risk again. I want to ask a couple of questions about you, Michael, before we have to wrap. You mentioned your father's World War II service and military career. I assume it was the Army based on how you spoke of him, and how that's unusual, you know, given the direction your life has taken in your role in Israeli politics, to have a dad who is not just a World War II veteran, but an American World War II veteran. Tell me a bit about your father and his experiences in a little bit more detail. And how did that shape your worldview growing up?

And how did it intersect with your decision to become a lone soldier in Israel? Totally, the direct line. Okay, I said it was my father. My father's one of four brothers who served to World War II. He and his elder brother, the one who went became a full bird colonel, did land on Normandy, fought all the way through France, Germany. And in the course of their combat experience,

they liberated a concentration camp, one of the satellite concentration camps of Dachau. My uncle had a camera. and took pictures of the horrors that he saw there. And my father had those pictures in an album that he kept in the basement. I have them here next to me in Jaffa today. And I lived in an entirely non-Jewish neighborhood. I was only Jewish kid in this neighborhood.

And I used to get beat up pretty regularly for being a Jewish kid. And I'd come home with a black eye or bloody nose. And my father would take me down to the basement and open this album and show me the piles of bodies and say, you see that son? You see that? that's why we need a strong Jewish state. Now, if you've just been called, you know, a dirty Jew and getting beaten up by that,

and your dad tells you that that has a very, I say, impactful result. And for the earliest age, I said, okay, I'm going to go to this country. I'm going to serve in that military. And, of course, I grew up during the period of the Six Day War and the picture of the paratroopers dancing in front of the Western Wall, I got to be one of those guys, okay? And only, the Army wanted to send him to artillery. I said, no, no, no, no. If you don't go to artillery, we're going to put you in prison.

Okay, put me in prison, but I have to go to the paratroopers. And finally, they relented and sent me to the paratroopers. But that experience was always very, very important to my father's experience. And when I was ambassador in Washington, I spent a lot of time with the U.S. military, whether going to Leavenworth, going to Annapolis, going to West Point, because I understood the culture. I was able to bridge that cultural gap. And now, and correct me if I'm wrong, Aaron, about less than 1% of the American population

serves in the military. And so there's a very big divide there. And I think also being a combat veteran was important for my ability to talk to people who had been serving in Iraq and serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And so I very much appreciated my father's war war war II experience.

He was a very decorated officer. And he had he had the Legion of Merit from the French, a couple of bronze stars. My uncle had silver stars. And, you know, I sometimes think what my father, my father passed away some years ago and I think how painful would be for him to witness some of the great polarization with an American society and the issues of, you know, whether Americans would support this war

against a country, Iran, which has committed not one act of war against the United States, but literally hundreds of acts of war against the United States. And I think he would, I think it would be very difficult for him right now. Yeah, we actually have a fair amount in common for having for having a lot not in common. It was my dad also saw Docow under very similar circumstances. I was a late arrival. I was a late arrival. But no, he came up from the south with a third infantry division, but they, you know, came through Bavaria there right at the end.

So it's fascinating to hear your account of this from your family's perspective. in terms of what's next with Iran, you know, I fear you expressed some perplexity that we haven't seen something big from Iran yet to draw the United States back into combat before the midterms. I think it's got to be coming. We don't really know what happened at Fairford yet, but we did just pull all the B-1 bombers out of there and the scramble over the weekend if you believe all the press accounts. And I suppose we'll know more in time about the plot there. but I don't think the Iranians can allow the current situation to just continue on current course speed. It's a terrible trend for them, even if they can put up with a lot of pain for a very long time, and I'm not in a position to personally judge how much pain they can endure for how long with that regime staying in place and not having to compromise.

But they've got to try something soon. And so I fear a very bumpy road lies ahead in the next few weeks. It does. But at the end of the day, keep in mind, and this is a whole. hard thing, I think, for Americans to keep in mind. And I understand the deep reticence here, the trauma during trauma of Iraq and Afghanistan, that should this regime fall, it is the ultimate game changer. It's peace not only between Israel and Lebanon, peace between Israel and Syria,

peace probably with Israel and Saudi Arabia, even with a post-Iatollah Iran. The Pax Americana is restored in the Middle East. It extends from the eastern Mediterranean to the shores of the Ganges. and China will think many times now before trying to invade Taiwan. The Russians will conclude things. It is the ultimate game changer and it's energy security for the world.

And the stakes are not huge. They are gargantuan. And I understand that. And I also know that the United States, with all of the, you know, the so many endless press reports about, you know, the shortage of interceptors and how much it costs every day.

The American military is a mighty weapon, 11 aircraft carriers. Right now you have three. And it is B-52 bombers that are sitting somewhere in the Midwest that have not been flown yet. And when America wants to exert military power against a target, together with Israel, together with other allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and Emirates have together something in the order of 900 warplanes, the kind of impact we can have,

the kind of power we can put debrayer on Iran will be immeasurable, particularly in the previous war, very careful not to touch energy targets. If that was not the case in the next round, Iran will be at a completely different situation. And at the risk of myself sounding bellicose, I just want to say that just in purely military terms, America has the ability and the peoples of the Middle East

have every interest, and not just in the Middle East, the people of the world have every interest and seeing the Iranian regime fall. Ambassador Michael Oren, a true scholar statesman, six days of war is a favorite of mine and a classic. Can I say you're working on a history of the post-October 7th wars? Can I say that here? The first volume I've just completed.

It goes up to January 20th, 2025, the inauguration of Donald Trump. But it is a comprehensive history like the Six-Day War history. It's diplomatic, it's military, it's social, it's many things. And immensely complex. And it's an issue that is in the paper still almost every day, a war that began three years ago this week. Well, I hope you'll come back to the show to talk about that book when it comes out. And thank you so much for coming on School of War today. Great pleasure and honor.

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