It’s Noon in Israel: Is Fear of Israel Keeping Iran Alive?

Also, Netanyahu releases his side of the October 7 story, and a Hamas hotel has been stopped in Jerusalem.

Ayatola Ali Khameni meeting with a veterans organisation for the Iraq-Iran war in December 2025 (leader.ir)

It’s Friday, February 6, and this has already become a prewritten script: every time the United States moves to strike a Middle Eastern dictatorship, it is preceded by a nerve-racking wait, followed by feverish diplomatic contacts—and above all, the local dictator refuses to grasp the severity of his situation until it is too late.

Abbas Araghchi will not be the first foreign minister to fly urgently to meet Americans in an attempt to prevent war. Before him came Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, in a futile meeting with his counterpart James Baker. Saddam Hussein promised both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush that the United States would discover hell in Iraq, that its forces would die there in droves, and that his country would stand firm. Aziz ended his life in a Baghdad prison; Saddam went to the gallows.

The Iranians are no more flexible, no less fanatical, and burdened with the same problems as their hated Iraqi predecessors. Their almost last hope of preventing action lies with the Sunni states of the Middle East. Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia publicly warn that an American strike could escalate into a regional war. In practice, a Middle East expert told me this week, what truly worries them is the almost inevitable outcome of eliminating the ayatollahs’ regime: Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

One does not need to believe Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s fantasies about Israeli attempts to conquer Mount Ararat, nor buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories about a secret Netanyahu government plan to restore the days of the Kingdom of David, to understand the pressure. Nadim Koteich, a leading journalist in the Arab world and a harsh critic of Iran, wrote last week: “Regardless of your political views, the following fact cannot be denied: Israel is emerging from the post–October 7 era with unprecedented military and intelligence dominance. Its operations systematically dismantled the Iranian proxies, reshaped the security architecture of Lebanon and Syria, and demonstrated strike capabilities unmatched by any other actor in the region. Its recognition of Somaliland and expansion into the Red Sea signal ambitions broader than the traditional ones. For Saudi Arabia, which cannot normalize relations with Israel without some Israeli-Palestinian agreement, this creates an uncomfortable reality: the strongest military power in the region is not subject to any influence from Riyadh.”

For years, the Iranian threat troubled the Middle East but also bound Israel and most of its resources to the struggle against Tehran and its proxies. Now, the Iranian carcass lies in the middle of the room. For most of the Middle East, it is convenient for it to remain there—without a death certificate and without a new, far more Israeli Middle East.

This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.

To read on my website click here

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convening the Security Cabinet in December 2025. (PMO)

While Americans are still combing through millions of pages from the Epstein files, Benjamin Netanyahu has released a far slimmer dossier on a different, more consequential controversy. The 55-page document released last night details the failures that preceded October 7.

So you don’t have to read it yourself, I’ll give you the summary: Netanyahu is guilty—and so is everyone else.

The document is a copy Netanyahu’s response to questions posed by the now-halted investigation of the state comptroller into the disaster. The High Court froze the comptroller’s probe in December , ruling that only a state commission of inquiry—appointed and directed by the court itself—could properly investigate the events leading to October 7. But it seems Netanyahu found a use for the testimony.

So what do the documents actually reveal?

Aside from some shocking quotes in hindsight—not much.

They confirm what was already assumed: no single person is to blame. Everyone is.

Quotes like the head of military intelligence claiming that Hamas is “most deterred” of Israel’s enemies, and the Shin Bet chief estimating the chances of an attack were “low” and that Israel should not “risk miscalculation” by mounting a broad response an hour before the October 7 attack, are difficult to read knowing what we know now—but they don’t change the fundamental truth:

The conceptzia—the widespread assumption within Israel’s security establishment that Hamas was deterred and content to govern its terrorist fiefdom in Gaza—was a group project.

In Israel, as in the rest of the world, success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. No one wants to be connected to the conceptzia’s heritage. But the quotes from the heads of the army, intelligence services, and security agencies show they all had a hand in it.

Of course, this series of quotes is compiled from Netanyahu’s perspective—selected selectively to evade responsibility. Conspicuously missing from the documents are his own statements reinforcing the conceptzia, which we know existed. Unfortunately, his defense collapses under its own weight: while the document shows his support for targeted strikes, nowhere is there evidence that he fundamentally challenged the prevailing assumption.

That raises the question: if he had been woken up on the morning of October 7, what would he have done? If he had acted, would the danger have disappeared—or merely waited for the next opportunity?

In short: the documents make one thing clear. In the last 10 years, no one—Netanyahu included—proposed conquering Gaza and eliminating Hamas. That makes him neither better nor worse than all the others.

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Palestinian Billionare Bashar al-Masri showing off his development Rawabi City in Gaza in 2014 (Facebook)

The Jerusalem municipality has halted a hotel development due to ties to an alleged Hamas supporter. The decision came after a plea lodged on Wednesday by bereaved families was accepted by the municipality.

Who is this alleged Hamas supporter?

None other than Palestinian American billionaire Bashar al-Masri—secret advisor to the Trump administration’s former hostage envoy, Adam Boehler.

Al-Masri is currently being sued in the U.S. by 200 families of October 7 victims who allege that he provided funding to Hamas and allowed the group to use his facilities in Gaza—including a beachfront hotel and an industrial area near the Israeli border.

The evidence doesn’t look great. His properties were found to contain Hamas tunnels, a Hamas naval commando base, and, according to the hotel plea, “other strategic assets that Hamas used to slaughter our children and kill our soldiers.”

The luxury hotel was planned for East Jerusalem, across from the Old City. The project has been paused pending the completion of a “thorough review.”

I have to agree with the parents: until his innocence is proven, I’d rather not provide Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Brigades with luxury accommodations across from the Temple Mount.

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