On its southern front, Israel remains in a holding pattern, unsure if U.S. mediation efforts will secure the release of hostages, and whether fighting will resume. Many Israelis, and many more in the West, worry that in the latter scenario the IDF won’t be able to accomplish what it couldn’t in the first fifteen months of the war. John Spencer is confident that Israel can win, and that if the fighting starts again conditions will be more favorable—but a shift in strategy will also be necessary. It’s worth considering what he writes in light of our recent series on Israel’s strategic challenges:

While still dangerous, Hamas lacks the centralized command structure, heavy weaponry, and defensive strongholds it once had.

To be sure, to defeat Hamas decisively, Israel will have to shift from its previous approach of raiding operations to a more methodical strategy. The IDF must fully seize and clear territory, rather than conducting short-term incursions. Notably, it was not until late 2024 that the IDF began systematically clearing portions of northern Gaza, an approach that will need to be extended to the entire Strip. Once Hamas is militarily neutralized, Israel must ensure that the group cannot reconstitute itself, as it has in past conflicts.

This will likely require a temporary occupation of Gaza by the IDF or another security force to provide stability and prevent a resurgence of Hamas. While politically complex, securing and governing Gaza post-Hamas is essential to ensuring that a new militant force does not simply take its place.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.