On The Hour – July 9, 2026| Is Israel Next?U.S.-Iran Conflict Intensifies

Welcome back to ILTV on the hour. I'm Debo Klein coming to you live from Israel with all of the top headlines coming out of the region. It's currently 7 a.m. in New York and 2 p.m. here in Israel. These are all of the latest developments. The conflict in the Middle East is escalating for a second day straight with the United States once again unleashing massive airstrikes on Islamic regime targets across Iran. Now initial reports of massive blasts and interceptions in the skies of Jordan, now speculated to be Iranian ballistic missiles fired at the Middle Eastern country, worsening the stability in the region. This, of course, follows new reports of new fresh American airstrikes in the last hour alone on Islamic regime targets in the Bashur area. Now this, of course, follows another day and night of U.S. military strikes dropping over 170 munitions over what is said to be around 100 targets in Iran. According to U.S. Central Command, the attacks from earlier this morning and last night hit Iranian air defense systems, missiles and drone storage facilities, naval assets and logistics infrastructure. All this in response, of course, to recent Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Now in response to these strikes, the Islamic regime has attacked U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain, sending missiles and drones toward the Gulf countries, threatening, of course, further escalation and action if Washington continues its campaign. And that we've definitely seen earlier this morning. This is the latest from President Donald Trump. We just hit them very hard. And I'd say we hit them 20 to 1. Every time they hit us, we're going to hit them 20. We did it last night. They did a little something today, but it was really retribution for last night. They hit actually three boats, not two. And when they hit, we hit back much harder. They have very little left and they want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly. I just don't know if they're worthy of making the deal. I don't know that they're going to honor the deal. That's the problem. Explosions in Kuwait and sirens in Jordan of the last few minutes. But all of this, meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz activity has been largely stopped. And in response to the escalations, gas prices have now spiked by 8 percent in the past two days and still climbing. But in Israel, despite all of this, concern lingers about the recent escalations between the United States and Iran that could spill over into Israel as sirens blare across Jordan. They're getting closer to Israel. The Islamic regime could be sending ballistic missile attacks from the from the state of Iran over to Israel. But also the Islamic regime could be reactivating their Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to continue attacks once again on northern Israel. Now, in Lebanon, immense efforts are reportedly taking place behind the scenes to prevent escalation between Hezbollah and the Israeli military still stationed in the security zone in southern Lebanon. Now, this remains a point of contention in the U.S. mediated talks between Israel and Lebanon, of course, as the IDF has not yet withdrawn from the agreed upon pilot zones as part of the framework for a peace deal. According to the Israeli military, Lebanese armed forces are not yet ready to adequately take over these security zones and begin the disarmament of Hezbollah. Lebanese officials are now threatening to boycott the next round of talks scheduled for July 15th in Rome. Israel's security cabinet has been told the current arrangement is a major strategic success, allowing the IDF to continue operating inside a security buffer zone while also dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure. An Israeli security official stressed that, if necessary, Israel will continue to act against the terror group on its own timetable. Washington is reportedly exploring the possibility of a trilateral meeting between President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Ayoun, though Lebanese officials are said to strongly oppose any face-to-face meeting between all of these leaders. But in more Middle East action before we move on, a major shift has occurred in U.S. policy after President Trump declared that Syria will be removed from America's list of state sponsors of terrorism. With this move, Trump has marked a significant diplomatic victory for Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Shara, despite continuing Israeli concerns. Announcing the decision in Ankara, Turkey on the sidelines of the 2026 NATO summit, Trump has effectively undone a 1979 decision by the U.S. to dedicate Syria as a official state sponsor of terrorism. According to Trump, Syrian President al-Shara is doing, quote, an unbelievable job of uniting Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. Take a listen. Mr. President, are you going to remove Syria from the state sponsor of terrorism list? I think I will. Why wouldn't I? He's done a great job. Maybe he would have brought that up. That's a good question. Yeah. Any problems with that? I think we should. Yeah, I will. Do you still want Syria to help with Hezbollah in Lebanon? They could help. We'll find out. I think we're making a lot of progress. Now, in a letter to the Syrian leader, Trump said U.S. companies are ready to invest in Syria and help rebuild the war-torn country. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio has formally notified Congress of this move, starting a 45-day review period before the decision can take effect. The decision comes despite continuing concerns in Jerusalem, of course, over Shara's jihadist past and the lack of any breakthrough toward peace between Israel and Syria. We will, of course, be following this story. But first, joining me now to discuss all of these latest developments in the Middle East is our panel of experts. For today, I'm pleased to welcome to the show Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations, and Major in the Reserves Eliot Khodof, a political and military analyst. Thank you both so much for joining. So I'd love to get both of your opinions on all of these recent escalations. I mean, this isn't the first time that the United States has strategically carried out precision strikes in response to, quote unquote, ceasefire violations by the regime. So is this still a limited deterrence campaign or can a full-blown confrontation be expected at this point? Ambassador Ettinger, if you can start us off with that. Well, I think so far what we have seen, assuming, I mean, this is an assumption that everything published about a supposed agreement with Iran is true, reminds me of an old country-western song, That Ain't No Way to Go. Brooks and Dunn were country-western singers back in the 1980s, 1990s. And part of the lyrics is, I'm tired of thinking, guess I'll do some wishful dreaming. And when one observes the track record of U.S.-Iran relations since 1978, 79 until today, one wonders how long is the U.S. going to engage or indulge in wishful dreaming or wishful thinking. And what we have seen at that time is the mere assumption that negotiation could solve the problem ignores fundamentals of the Ayatollah regime in particular, the Middle East in general. There is absolutely unbridgeable gap between the way the Ayatollah regime approaches negotiation and the way the U.S. or the Western world approaches negotiation. I do hope that the fact that President Trump has not minimized its unprecedented military deployment to the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Mediterranean and the Middle East at large, I hope that that means that President Trump is still in touch with reality and he understands that at the end of the day, if he wants to advance his noble goal of ending wars, minimizing wars and terrorism, he has to uproot the chief epicenter of war, terrorism and drug trafficking, which is the Ayatollah regime. And any time wasted on the cost of regime change is dwarfed by the catastrophic cost of refraining from regime change, which would pave the road to the first ever apocalyptic nuclear power, the Ayatollah regime. And you know, it could also be argued that Trump may be slightly detached from reality at times, it seems as though that's the case, but it could also be argued that Trump also may have a few things up his sleeve, keeping his cards close to his chest at this point. Elliot, do you agree with that? Do you think that we could be headed toward a full-blown war, especially here in Israel? Do you think that we're still in deterrence, he's still seeking peace in the Middle East? I wouldn't call it deterrence, I would call it coercive diplomacy. What he's trying to do is coerce the Iranians to take the negotiations seriously. And I fully agree with what Ambassador Ettinger said. I think that Trump is now learning the hard way what it means to be in negotiations in what I call the Ayatollah's flying carpet market, which is very, very different from real estate negotiating in New York. He's learning it, he's learning it the hard way that the Iranians are pushing to enshrine and enforce their demands, regardless of what was agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding. They have their line. It doesn't matter what they agree to, they're going to do whatever they want. And that's what we've seen in the past few days, the firing on ships in the Straits of Hormuz. And the Americans are responding essentially symbolically. Now, it's not that they're not doing damage, but what they're really doing at this point is trying to convince the Iranians, and Trump has said many things, but among other things, he said that to try to get them back in line. And he always throws in the side of the Iranians really want to deal, we just need to push them a little bit more to get them to that point. I think it's a fantasy and I agree with, again, everything Ambassador Ettinger said earlier, a deal between the United States and the Ayatollah regime is either a fantasy, or handing over a victory to the Iranians. And that would be catastrophic to the region and to the world. Absolutely. And, you know, it's also been said and thought here in Israel when this whole process was even starting in the first place. I want to talk a little bit about what's going on here on the ground. Could this potentially be start spilling over into Israel? The United States has now just released a warning to all of its citizens who are in Jordan right now as missiles, of course, fly overhead. And the Jordanians now saying that they're working to intercept these missiles. Could this potentially be spilling over into Israel? We also had Pete Hagseth who has canceled his trip to Israel. Is that a serious indication of an imminent escalation? Or is it relatively irrelevant? Ambassador Ettinger, what do you think? Well, in the Middle East, the name of the game is unpredictability. And certainly, it's true when it comes to war and terrorism, especially the Jordanian theater. As we speak, the Ayatollah regime is joining attempts by Palestinian terror groups, by Muslim Brotherhood terrorists trying to topple the Hashemite regime in Jordan. And that's not a small asterisk or a note. This is a very central issue because the Hashemite regime is extremely vulnerable. And once it is toppled, it would mean that Jordan would become another platform for Islamic terrorism, very similar to Libya and Syria and Lebanon and Iraq and Yemen. And that would spill over into Sinai, from Sinai to Egypt is going to cause ripple effects into Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Bahrain and Kuwait all the way to Oman, endangering a very critical area, which is the home of 48% of global oil reserves, a major intersection of trade sea lanes between the Far East and Western Europe. And once again, dealing with the Ayatollah regime, we have to realize that this is the head of the venomous octopus with its tentacles in Lebanon, in Syria, in Gaza, in Yemen, in fact, all the way to Central America, South America, and the U.S. homeland area as well. The Ayatollah regime must be unseat, must be replaced by another regime, if indeed we aim to solve the problems in Gaza and Hezbollah, focusing on Gaza and Hezbollah, while the Ayatollah regime is in place, ignores the crux of the problem at the expense of dire American interests and all allies of the U.S. in the Middle East. As long as the Ayatollah regime is in place, each pro-U.S. Arab regime is in danger of being toppled or of being unseated. And once that happens, we're talking about a huge bonanza to China and Russia and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ayatollah regime and quite a setback to the U.S. economy and U.S. homeland security. The U.S. economy already suffering after these recent escalations in the Strait of Hormuz. Elliot, I want to go back to you. Iran has responded through missiles, drones, and its proxy network before. What do you think is the likelihood that the regime will reactivate Hezbollah and drag them back into this war? And if you could expand also, is that necessarily a very bad thing for Israel if we're allowed to sort of, you know, go full speed ahead with the campaign to dismantle Hezbollah? First, with all of the difficulties of predicting, and once again, I agree, this is, war is unpredictable under the best of circumstances. War in the Middle East, with all of its complexities, is even beyond that. So let me start by saying, I think that we will not see an immediate Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. Now, I say that very hesitantly because things can escalate very quickly. But as long as they stay in the frame that they are now, the Iranians, as I said before, are trying to establish their status quo. America is trying to reverse it, and they're going sort of tit for tat on that. The last thing they need at the moment, unless I totally misunderstand their strategy, is a full-scale Israeli involvement, because if Israel goes in, it's not going to be in the limited way that the Americans are doing. The likelihood of them activating Hezbollah, which incidentally is not a proxy of Iran, it's an agent of Iran, it takes its orders directly from the Quds Force, from the IRGC, distinct from Hamas. I think that is much higher. Using Hezbollah as a spoiler, a mixer, another element in this coercion versus back and forth system is much more likely. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing will ultimately result, as it has over the past rounds, of how the United States, in particular, how President Trump handles it. In other words, he can tell Israel today, tomorrow, go ahead, finish the job, and three days from now or five days from now, turn around and say, no, no, no, we're going back to negotiate with the Iranians, stop in the middle, withdraw, and everything that Israel has done up until that point, tactical successes being what they are, would basically have been wasted. So we're, in that sense, we're in a precarious situation. There would certainly be an opportunity if Hezbollah were to launch attacks directly against Israel. Whether it would turn out to our benefit or not is something that's impossible to predict, particularly with this administration. Absolutely. And, you know, we are in this time period right now where we have escalations in the Middle East, but we are still very unsure about what's going to happen. And as you both rightfully mentioned, it is really tough to predict. So I do want to dwell just on some of the things that we can give commentary on perhaps that have already happened. Of course, as we reported, you know, Israel warning the United States against its move to, you know, remove Syria as one of the countries on the list of the state sponsors of terrorism. This is, you know, one of those cases where the U.S. and Israeli visions, they don't seem to align, but what is the actual risk for Israel in this case scenario, Ambassador Ettinger? And do you think that maybe there's, you know, sort of this bigger picture at play? I keep going back to, you know, with the funeral processions for the, you know, former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that have been going on for a few days now. It's interesting to see which countries sent which dignitaries at what status were these dignitaries and who showed up to these funeral processions. And if I'm not mistaken, it was, I think the deputy foreign minister, I believe, of Saudi Arabia had flown to Tehran to participate. So are there, are these two shifts with the United States and Syria and Saudi Arabia and Iran, are they connected? Is there big movements going on or are these really just small case scenarios that you can pick out with a needle and that they don't actually mean much? Ambassador, what do you think? Well, for the U.S. to approach Syria as a non-terrorist state is another example of wishful thinking. And I would have expected President Trump to consider lifting the sanctions after or provided that the new leader of Syria disavows the fundamentals of ISIS, which he was a member of until recently. I would do it after the leader of Syria uproots hate education in Syria, anti-U.S., anti-Western, anti-infidel and anti-Israel education. And I would do it if the new leader of Syria ends the hate Friday sermons in the mosques and the hate editorials in the official media of Syria. As long as none of that takes place and none of them that has taken place, one, in my mind, should stick to reality and refrain from sacrificing reality on the altar of wishful thinking. And this is not an issue for Israel's national security. It undermines America's own interests because the ideology of the current leader of Syria, who was until recently the leader of a group which followed the theme of liberating Ashsham and Ashsham region includes, for instance, what Syrians refer to as Southern Syria, which is Jordan, pro-U.S. Jordan, namely to ignore the terror roots, the terror nature of the current leader of Syria threatens pro-U.S. Jordan with all the way to Saudi Arabia. And certainly, it plays into the hands of Erdogan in Turkey, who is there in order to reinstate what he calls the modern day Ottoman Empire once again at the expense of U.S. foothold in the Middle East. It's time for the U.S. to stop toying around with alternate reality. It's time to approach reality as frustrating as it is, as bleeding as it is, as insoluble it may seem. Any engagement with alternate reality would be dramatically self-destructive for the United States. That's an interesting take. I think that the equation between negotiations with the Islamic regime in Iran, and for example, the meetings of Ashara, Trump and Ashara have met in person multiple times, obviously invited him to the White House. There's the famous video of them playing basketball together, which is really just like inconceivable. And they're now in NATO together. Trump has not been face to face with a single Iranian leader. I do see the parallels that you're drawing here and the analogy. Elliot, I'm curious, do you agree with Ambassador Edinger on that? Or do you maybe disagree and think that perhaps Trump could be pushing for peace with Syria because he sees that there could actually be change as opposed to the regime? What do you think? I don't think so. I absolutely agree with the alternative reality description. And I think the best example of it, we've seen it, we have evidence of it in Trump's statement about how Ashara is doing such a great job in unifying Syria and pacifying it. It's true if you ignore the Alawites, the Druze, the Christians, the Kurds, and a few other groups who are not exactly being unified into Syria. So when Trump makes a that is patently false, covering the aggressive, violent behavior of the regime, it weakens America. And not only vis-a-vis Syria, but vis-a-vis others as well who look and say, wait a minute, America is living in an alternate reality. Maybe we can utilize it as well. Maybe we can take advantage of it as well. And that's never good for any country, certainly not for a And do you think that it's weakening Israel, in that sense? Indirectly, it is. Israel, in this sense, in this case, is taking a very clear independent path in terms of securing the border along the Golan. And interestingly enough, America has not put a lot of pressure on Israel on that issue, not as much as it did, for example, in Lebanon, in dealing with Hezbollah. So for the time being, I would say no. However, once again, we're talking about a dynamic situation with an unpredictable administration. And Trump could very easily say, hey, I've cut a deal with with Ashara. I want Israel out of Syria within 24 hours. And then the Israeli government's got to make some very difficult decisions. Absolutely difficult decisions ahead, and hopefully not many difficult days ahead, as we try to navigate these ever-changing dynamics here in the Middle East. But that is all the time that we have for our panel for our discussion today. I want to thank you both so much for joining us. Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, Major Eliot Rodoff, thank you both so much. And just to follow up on the developments coming out of Jordan, the Islamic regime and Iran have Jordan. That was the sirens that were blaring out earlier today. Now, Jordan, the authorities in response have now confirmed that all of the ballistic missiles have been successfully intercepted. There were no severe impact sites. Eight missiles were counted by Jordan. Eight missiles have been intercepted in Jordanian airspace, of course, fired by the Islamic regime in Iran. And now we will wait to see if there were any severe impacts or injuries in these case scenarios. But the interceptions have now been successful, and we can close that up. Of course, this is a developing story, and we will try to follow up. All of this happening, by the way, as new strikes have now been reported in a refinery in one of the port cities in southern Iran. We will, of course, continue to follow these developments. But many escalations across the Middle East, many things happening, and we wait patiently here in Israel to see if the spillover into Israel will come to fruition. But before we end our broadcast for today, we'd like to focus on a bit of a positive story. We like to end with a positive note. The holy city of Jerusalem has now been voted as the seventh best city to travel to in the world, ranked by 207,000 readers of the prestigious travel magazine Travel Plus Leisure. Jerusalem came in seventh in a list of the world's best cities awards 2026, and it also came in first in the list of best cities in Africa and the Middle East, passing all other African and Middle East cities when it comes to travel in 2026. Now, also highlighted was the Jerusalem Hotel, the Waldorf Astoria, that was ranked among the top three hotels in all of Africa and the Middle East. Now, this placing marks a significant development for Jerusalem, which has been slowly reshaping its touristic identity. The magazine read, quote, a longtime reader favorite. The holy city continues to inspire through historic and religious sites like the Temple Mount, as well as cultural highlights such as chef-led food tours of Mahana Yehuda Market. This ranking serves as a source of immense Israeli pride amid a beyond complicated chapter of wars and uncertainty that have significantly impacted Israel's tourism. But against all odds, Jerusalem continues to stand as a beacon of spirituality, history and resilience. And with that, we wrap up this edition of ILTV on the hour. Scan the QR code that's on your screen for more. I'm Debo Klein, and thanks for watching.