Iran War Update: Tactical Triumphs, Internal Revolt Bets, Hormuz Crisis – March 2026 Deep Dive

Hi Thomas, how are you? Pretty good. So now, you know, because there's really not a frontline reporters really like underground and people knows how the US mainstream media reports, so we would really like to hear from you. You are in Israel who is relatively more in the frontline and probably get more information. So could you first of all tell us, because some US media saying it's just far from success and but the Trump administration saying it's really getting close to end of the war. So what's really going on? I don't think that's an easy question. And success, you can talk about success in terms of tactics and strategy. And also success depends on what is your goal, right? If you set a very high goal and you achieve a certain level of success, maybe you don't feel successful, but if you set a lower goal, then it's easier to be successful. I think that this issue of what is the end goal and state of this war, this operation in terms of the US and Israel has been an issue of debate and mixed messages from both Israel and the US and everybody else. And I would say that's probably intentional because whatever you say, the enemy also hears that. So you want to give them all sorts of messages to keep them struggling to try to realize what the true thing is. Because on the one hand, both US military and the Israeli military and some statements by US and Israeli leaders say the main thing of this operation is not regime change. It's to make sure they don't have nuclear weapons, to destroy their ballistic missiles, to destroy their Navy, to destroy their ability to block the Straits of Hormuz. And that will hopefully create beneficial conditions for the Iranian people to take over their government. Some other people say, yeah, we're doing regime change. So if you're talking about the first set of goals, then definitely a lot of progress has been made in these three weeks. It's already three weeks of war in terms of hitting the big boats of the Iranian Navy, destroying the smaller ones. It will take some more effort. A lot of their ballistic missiles, their ballistic missiles production, and all sorts of regime targets and a lot of regime leaders have been killed one after another. Maybe some people in Iran don't want to be appointed to certain positions, because then they know they have a target on their back. Whether this will only, I think, yesterday or the day before in a hearing in Congress, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, when she was asked, she said that the Iranian regime is very much degraded, but it's still functioning. Because they have a big bench. Everyone that gets killed, there is a new one. And the system is still working, just a lot degraded. So there is a lot of amazing tactical successes. If the war were to stop right now, for some reason, it will take the Iranian regime a long time, a very long time, maybe years to get back the abilities that it had three weeks ago. However, they have not surrendered. The Straits of Hormuz are still effectively, most tankers don't go there because they're afraid they'll be hit. And Israelis are still going to the bomb shelters five to 15 times a day. So it's still ongoing. So we have to see what the end state will be. And part of it depends on the Iranian people. Part of it depends on the US and Israel. And part of it maybe depends on other forces. We'll have to see how these things go. You mentioned that in Israel, people still have to go to the bomb shelter five to 15 times. On the other hand, the Trump administration is saying the air force, the military force is almost gone. So how do you reconciliate that? The Iranians are not sending that many missiles every day, right? Okay. If they had, for example, 2,500 missiles when the war started, and even 2,000 of them were destroyed, they still have 500. If they send, I don't know, if they send 10 a day, you still have 50 days, right? And even if some of them are destroyed by Israel and the US. And I think that's the strategy they're doing because the Iranians don't have that many missiles left. So they're not sending dozens of missiles every time they send missiles. They send very few. But even if they send very few, it means half of Israel needs to go to a bomb shelter. So I think the goal is to wear down the Israeli citizens. So there's no contradiction. That's a small percentage of something big that's really damaging can still be damaging. Was the cluster bomb dropped by Iran scary? How people feel about it on the ground? I don't think it's more or less scary. Because basically when you have the alert or have the siren, you go to the bomb shelter and you hope for the best. The only thing with the cluster bomb is that one missile can create multiple areas of damage. So in that sense, it's more dangerous. But in terms of how the citizens behave, it's basically the same. What do you think the message that the Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu intend to send when he rallied all his military lieutenants around him and asked Iran to go celebrate a Persian fire festival and say, we will watch him from above? I don't live in Prime Minister Netanyahu's mind. What I can say is that this is the Iranian New Year is coming. I think the next three days, the Nowruz. And that's a big celebration. And I think generally both Americans and Israeli leaders have said, and many analysts have pointed out that if the Iranians want to rebel, then they might be able to give them air support. And Israel has already destroyed all sorts of checkpoints by the Basij militias to enable the citizens to move more freely. So I think maybe what that means is that Israel, I wouldn't say promising, but could provide air cover to all sorts of activities by the Iranian citizens. And I think that's supposed to encourage them. I'm not sure it's really to celebrate the Iranian New Year, but to plan and try to do all sorts of things. And it's been known that some of the targeting of these checkpoints was actually came from intelligence on the ground, that the Iranians passed to Israel and then Israel targeted those checkpoints. Talking about the rebellion from the Iranian people, so how do you think of the potential of that? It's very hard to tell, especially now that the internet is closed by the Iranian regime. And the opposition before was fragmented. And there were many attempts at mass protests that failed. But there is a big difference. Now, the US and Israel are working hard to destroy all the military and internal policing capabilities of the regime. So I think in the beginning of the war, both Israeli leaders and American leaders told the Iranians to rise up and take their country, but not yet, because it's still dangerous. And I think it is still dangerous. So I think if a certain level of destruction of not just the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, but also all the internal police, like the Basij and all the others, we may see more people. Because if you don't have any weapons, and you are facing people with machine guns, you're going to die, especially if they're willing to shoot. So a certain threshold has to be passed in terms of how scared the police are to shoot their people because they know maybe they will go to a tribunal tomorrow. There is another issue, which is that Iran, as a major big part of the population, is Persian. There are many minorities. And many of these minorities, whether it's like the Kurds or the Arabs or the Bauchi, their areas are on the Gulf, and they are where the oil is. So some analysts say that one... And these people don't like the regime because they're minorities and they're being repressed one way or another. And some of them have militias like the Kurds. So some people said, okay, let's... These people do have weapons, and they don't like the regime, and they sit on the area of the oil. So maybe we should encourage them. So far, it hasn't worked. And I know there was a plan to have the Kurds from northern Iran and northeastern Iraq and all of that area who have the Peshmerga militias to go into Iran and start fighting. But apparently, I can't verify, but I heard it from several sources, that this plan was revealed too early. And now maybe it's not going to happen. So one may hope that at a certain point, maybe a certain number of military people of one branch of the military or another will decide they don't want to participate anymore in the current regime. And maybe they will join forces with some people in the opposition. I don't know if that stage has been reached yet for two reasons. One, because they keep fighting. And two, because it's really hard to get information out of Iran unless you're the Mossad or the CIA, and I'm neither. So combining with what Netanyahu, the message he's sending, that come out and celebrate your fire festival, we will be watching for you from above, is that saying that now it's time to come out and rebel? I don't know, perhaps. I'm not sure it's safe yet, and I don't want to encourage anybody to do anything. But I think it also ties to this sort of controversial bombardment of the Paris natural gas field in the Gulf by Israel a couple of days ago that resulted in Iran firing at the Qatari part of that field and basically making all the companies that drill for oil and gas in the Gulf want to quit for a while. And then they were all angry at Israel, and Trump said, I didn't know about it. And Israel said, you did know about it in a certain way. And I think I can say two things about that. I've heard from certain sources that the reason Israel bombed that place is that this gas field is also used for domestic use for the people in Iran. And if you hit it, basically the Iranian people will be in a worse shape, and they might be more inclined to rebel, especially as this is happening just before the Iranian new year. So I think that that's what I heard from one source in terms of timing. I think in terms of whether the Trump administration knew about it or not, I will only say this. Everybody knows, at least from the movies, about the good cop and the bad cop when interrogating a suspect. And they're both working, they're cooperating with one another, but it's more useful for one guy to play the good cop and for one guy to play the bad cop. So I think it's probably a similar situation. Okay. Going back to the Iranian people's thinking, I just heard from a media report saying that, for example, police in Iran talked to Mossad saying, please come and continue to finish this regime. So do you hear anything like or similar? And what does that mean? What I have heard is that the Mossad and Israeli intelligence have been making phone calls to all sorts of officers in the Iranian regime, basically telling them, we know who you are. Either you help the opposition or we kill you. And it's been reported, and I can't verify that, that an increasing number of such officers say, please don't hurt us. We are with the opposition. But again, many of these things, you can't really see what's happening beneath the surface until a certain threshold is reached and then things flip. And on the surface, it seems like that threshold has not been reached. I can't say for sure, but I am sure that when it does flip, all of us will know about it pretty quickly. Okay. Why Israel decided to delegate the rights of attack to first-line officers now? Well, let me put it this way. It's important, I think, to qualify. Whatever people say during war, they could be lying. I don't know if that's true or not. Like it's a strategy. As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, deception is an essential part of warfare. It's not the exact quote, right? So the good guys lie and the bad guys lie and everybody lies because war is part like a psychological war. So in terms of psychology, it tells the Iranian people, the Iranian commanders, basically, it's a free fire. You need to be more scared because if somebody identifies you, they don't have to ask for permission. I think on the operational level, if indeed such an instruction has been sent out, it's probably because they've seen that the mechanism of identifying and targeting and everything works very well. From the intelligence until the missile hits somebody in Iran. And so I think they decided that maybe they've noticed that they're missing opportunities because it takes too long to call the top people because maybe you don't call the top people. You call somebody and somebody calls somebody and until they get permission, maybe the window of opportunity is closed. Operational speaking, maybe they have seen that the whole chain works very well, but they're losing opportunities because it takes too long to get permission. So they gave probably for certain categories of officers, of enemy officers or enemy people, rights to lower level commanders. It's not like a captain. It's probably the guy who is in charge of the air force operations in Iran at that moment. I'm sure at every given moment in every 24 hours, there is a probably pretty high ranking air force officer in charge of the operations and a probably high ranking intelligence officer in charge of the intelligence. And basically it's been delegated to them. It's not been delegated to lieutenants. Okay. Did you have any experience in such war? I was in the air force many years ago, but there was never such a war in my time. There were all sorts of operations. But what I can say is that for many years, the Israeli air force has been considered a very professional part of the Israeli military. And over recent decades, the integration of the air force with ground forces, with different intelligence agencies and the intelligence and the military intelligence has become much more tight and much more efficient. And that's probably very useful this time when there's lots of Israeli planes going to hit multiple targets and everything is done very efficiently because in recent decades, that cooperation has gradually been built so that intelligence officers and air force officers all know each other and how and all the systems talk to each other. And I'm sure in the US military, it's the same. Yeah, I think the world really are impressed by Israel, which side they are on, how the Israeli intelligence, the military force can do such a job in this war. I think no matter if people agree with the war or not. So just from what you know and what you can share, especially like today, I think there's a report that reported another high-ranking officer in the Iranian regime has been killed, mostly because of the Israeli intelligence, the force and also combined with the cooperation with the US. So why Israel can do such a job? Since it was founded and before, Israel was always under threat. And so it always devoted a lot of resources. In terms of the military budget in Israel is maybe 10%, maybe more. And the US is now asking NATO to get to five and most of them are 2%, right? And when there is no choice, you just do what you have to do. And over the years, you develop all these capabilities and a lot of talent. And everybody theoretically has to enlist in Israel into the military. So basically, you get the pick of the best people, whether you send them to elite special forces or intelligence or the air force or all of these other places. And you try to build on that. It's not that there have not been failures, right? October 7th, just two and a half years ago, was a massive intelligence failure. So it's not that everything works perfectly all the time. But I think when you decide to devote since the beginning of Israel, obviously after the Holocaust, you have no choice, you have to be strong. Then you just work on it. Okay. We also talk about the secure strait of Hormuz. Right now, actually, the European countries and Japan took a U-turn. So what's your take on it? Let's start with a fact. The U.S., the amount of oil and gas that goes through the straits of Hormuz that gets to the U.S. is negligible. Maybe like 3%, 2%. Most of the oil and gas that goes through the strait of Hormuz goes actually to East Asia, whether it's to China, Japan, South Korea, India. And a smaller percent, bigger than the U.S., but a smaller percent goes to Europe. When President Trump told all these countries whether they're NATO allies and the U.S. is asking for their help, or whether it's the East Asian allies that are not a part of a NATO-like group, but they actually are the ones who are using all of the oil, whether they're not just allies, because all of you countries are using the oil. We don't need it. Then it makes sense that there is a reasoning behind President Trump's request or demand for them to participate. I'm sure all of them didn't want to get involved more than they can because they may become targets. But I think we don't know what happened behind the scenes. But the latest thing that President Trump said before the U-turn was that after the war is over, we will just, or maybe not after the war, maybe when things are settled, the U.S. will just let, will not take care of security in the Strait of Hormuz. And the countries that use it will have to take care of it. And that it might make these countries change their mind. And it seems like it has. I think also NATO Secretary, NATO Secretary General has been much more, one could say, realistic or aligned with the Trump administration than some of the NATO country leaders. And maybe he exerted his influence. And at the same time, the Japanese Prime Minister had planned to arrive, I think, yesterday to the White House. And I'm quite sure it would have been a very bad visit had the Japanese Prime Minister said no. So we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes. And we don't really know what they are, they have committed to doing. But I think the fact that more countries are getting involved in this probably will make it harder for the Iranians to keep blocking it because they'll be under more pressure from more places. But we will have to see how it goes. I think one more point is that if no country had said yes, then yes, the US and Israel can keep doing it. But it would have been a bad look for the Trump administration. And I think they can't have that. So they probably exerted enormous pressure to make sure that at least some allies say yes. You mentioned about China. Obviously, I think it's also expected that China would not participate to secure the Strait of Hormuz. And then President Trump announced to delay his meeting with Xi, which is supposed to happen at the end of the month. So what's your take on that? Well, it could really be just operational reasons. You don't want to do that in the middle of the war. But also, it kind of sends a message. I think in terms of the direct negotiations between the Trump administration and the Chinese Communist Party, there haven't been any long-term breakthroughs because you really can't achieve any long-term breakthroughs negotiating with the CCP. So maybe the thinking in Zhongnanhai by Xi Jinping and some others were that they're going to get some concessions from Trump and have the meeting. And the thing is, whenever they have a meeting, whenever Chinese leaders have meetings with somebody like President Trump, they use it not just for what you think, like whether they get something from America. They use it to show their own citizens that they have good relations with the US or that their leader has legitimacy in the world. And also, they use it to show all the American allies around them, whether it's Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam. It makes all these other leaders doubt that perhaps America will not be by their side because they're doing good business with China. So whenever such a visit happens, then it serves multiple purposes for the CCP. I think after what happened in Venezuela with taking out Maduro, what's happening now in Iran, what may be happening now with Cuba and other places, I think if you look three months ago, that meeting would have been in a place where Xi Jinping would have been in a better position than he is now. And I guess as the fact that Trump is moving it or either moving it or postponing it, probably sends a message to China, you're not that important. And part of it may be negotiation tactics, and part of it may be also a true reflection of the state of the world that now some of their proxies are gone or in the state of being decimated. Yeah, there are some discussions about why Trump, President Trump, is doing this right now towards Venezuela, Iran, because domestically, this is a midterm year, right? Midterm election year, the economy, people still have concerns. And so why Trump and his administration decided to get Maduro, then going to Iran, and in the meantime, talking to communist China? Well, one theory is that the big grand strategy of this Trump administration against China is maybe threefold. One is take out its proxies, whether it's Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. They've been trying to solve the Russia-Ukraine situation for a long time. It's not solved yet, but I think part of it is because of that. Because basically, all those proxies draw resources and attention from the U.S. And also the CCP can use them whenever they want to do something or they're criticized, then some war starts and everybody looks there. That's the first pillar. The second pillar is basically, nobody will say it, but basically decoupling, which means re-industrializing the U.S. and moving supply chains away from China, whether it's like rare earth minerals or just anything and everything, French shoring and near shoring. And at the same time, buying time in the negotiations with China, basically using the old CCP trick or Iranian trick. All these regimes do the same thing. They do negotiations, but they never yield anything. They just buy time for those regimes to get what they want. But now it seems like the U.S. is using their strategy against them to buy time with the CCP while doing the first two things. So this is one interpretation. In my mind, it's a positive interpretation. I don't know if it's true. We'll have to see what happens. In terms of the timing of the war in Iran or taking off of Maduro, I think part of it is they wanted to do it. But the other part is probably related to operational considerations, right? Because whether it's for Maduro, for example, right? You needed to have certain specific conditions and information to be able to grab him like that. And maybe that happens every few months. And if you see the opportunity and you already have the intention of doing it, then you can't miss it. And it's the same with Iran. Israel, after the 12-day war last summer, was monitoring what's happening in Iran. And I'm sure the U.S. was too. And according to Israeli sources, they saw that Iran is starting, is trying to restart its nuclear problem. It's rebuilding its ballistic missile capacity. And I've heard, again, I can't verify it, they were working on, the Iranians were working on some other kind of weapons of mass destruction. I don't know if it's chemical or biological or something like that. So basically, Israel was planning to strike again. But as far as I know, they were planning to strike in the summer. But then what happened was the protests were starting in Iran a couple of months ago and became very big. And President Trump said, help is on the way. And then what happened, and then I think the Israeli leadership thought, okay, maybe we can do it sooner. And I guess what really determined when that operation started was the intelligence of when Khamenei and all his people are going to be gathered together so they can be taken out. And I think that was what determined the specific time of the operation, because maybe you don't get many chances of that happening. So you have to seize it. Just like with the beeper operation a couple of years ago against Hezbollah, then the timing was not so much that there was a meeting, but that Hezbollah was going to discover that their beepers are booby-trapped. So they had to do it before they discover it. So sometimes it's not just grand strategy. It's just a narrow window of opportunity that you have to seize or you lose it, at least for a while. Maybe for most of the politicians as a U.S. president, at the midterm year, in the wild, the oil, the gas price, it's all looking good. After this war, actually, it rises in the price. So for a regular war, most of the politicians, they may just say, let's wait, right? But for Trump, he's different. And so what do you think? What does that demonstrate? What kind of a politician Trump is? Well, I think that question is too big for me to say, but I would say, I think President Trump and some people in his cabinet, some of his advisors and President Trump himself, they keep the long view, right? Because first of all, it's like a world competition with the CCP. And Xi Jinping has instructed his military, but he keeps taking out his generals. But theoretically, he told his military to be ready to take Taiwan in 2027. So whether that's true or not, I don't know, but you probably want to get rid of all the proxies before 2027. And now it's 2026, so you don't have that much time. The other thing is, a lot can happen between now and the midterms. So if now the oil prices are high, if this operation concludes successfully in two, three, five, six, seven, whatever weeks it's still going on, and by the summer, oil prices are down and the Middle East is in a better shape, then the midterms will look very nice. So people who are so sensitive to the polls about what's happening now and may make very short-term decisions, but they're not necessarily beneficial long-term. And I think whether you like President Trump or not, and it's probably half and half in the US and maybe in the world, I think from his perspective, he's really doing it to help America and save America. Of course, if he does a good job, he'll have a great legacy. But so I think I'm sure that from his point of view, beyond like winning elections is more to be able to continue doing the work that he wants to do in the next two years and not have a confrontational Congress, because that's according to the constitution right now, this is his last term. And I think many presidents in their second term try to do things that maybe they were more reluctant to do in their first term. Okay. So any other observations you would like to share with our audience? I think the situation now seems pretty tense because when the Straits of Hormuz are effectively closed and all the big countries have reserves, so it's not an immediate problem, but in a couple of months, it's going to be a problem. And a lot of American firepower is concentrated in the Middle East and not around China. And the meters are coming and Israeli population is under missile bombardment and they don't see the end because like we said, unless there is some sort of ceasefire or the regime in Iran changes, they will still have a couple of missiles they can fire every day and put everybody in bombshells. So I think part of the game here is stamina for everybody. It's resilience, to have resilience, because when you're in the middle of the fight, it's the hardest time because you're already committed, but you can't see the end. So resilience is important. But the other thing is really important, and I'm sure people are working on it in terms of the Trump administration, is to try to figure out what kind of end states you want for this conflict and already start working on them. Because I think one of the challenges for Israel in Gaza, for example, is that Israel never declared exactly what the end state it wants, whether it occupies Gaza forever or the Palestinian Authority comes in or somebody else comes in. And I'm sure there were all sorts of reasons why Israel didn't do it. But at the end of the day, Hamas is still ruling half of Gaza. And that's not what Israel wanted. And I think part of it may be because they didn't want to bring in the Palestinian Authority or somebody else so that they didn't to hand over power to anybody. So now the default is Hamas is still there. It may change. It may change very soon. But I think the lesson from that is that while you're fighting, you already need to work on the end states you want to reach. And like I said, I'm sure the Trump administration is working on it, and I'm sure they're not telling us about it because probably that's a more clandestine activity than the overt military attacks. We talked about how the goal of Netanyahu and the Trump may be different. So at this stage, what's your take on it? Well, I mean, I think both agree on the military objectives. I think neither the Israeli military nor the American military got instructions to do regime change. The Israeli military didn't get that too. Didn't get those instructions to do regime change. Maybe the Mossad did, maybe the CIA did, but the military didn't. But of course, since Israel is in the neighborhood, it's much more important for Israel to have a different regime in Iran than ostensibly it is for the U.S. But I think Israel understands that they're the junior partner and the U.S. is the senior partner. And I think the U.S. understands that Israel, there are certain red lines that Israel cannot tolerate that it considers to be threats, imminent threats to its security. So there is some dialogue around that. Of course, there are differences. And I think the fact that these differences exist actually kind of destroys the narrative that Israel is leading the U.S. into this war. Because otherwise, the U.S. would be declaring the same objectives as Israel. And that's not the case. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because the role the United States is supposed to play versus the CCP is probably much bigger than Israel. So obviously, the United States has different interests. I think that existed three months ago or six months ago, even in the war in the summer, that they don't see this. Even in the war in the summer, right? When they were negotiating a ceasefire, Israel sent planes for one last attack. And when Trump found out, he stopped them, called Israel, and they had to turn around, do a U-turn in the air and go back to Israel because Trump was angry that Israel is attacking Iran when they're negotiating a ceasefire. So at the moment, it seems manageable, but we will have to see. I think some military planners in Israel may be worried that their plan was for four to six weeks of fighting. And now we're sort of in the midpoint of that. And when you do that, you kind of decide, I'll attack these targets now and these targets later and these targets at the end. But they're kind of worried that President Trump might pull the plug earlier and then those important targets they plan for the end, they'll never get the chance to attack. So, you know, the fact that President Trump likes to keep the element of surprise and it's kind of maybe unnerving for some in the Israeli side because they want to have these four, five, six, whatever weeks to finish their list of targets. But that's just the way it is and everybody has to accommodate that. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. All right. Yeah. Thank you, Tammuz, again, for sharing your observation and value points. Thank you so much, Kathy, for having me. Yeah. So keep safe until next time. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.