And, as those proxies reveal themselves, the Jews are fairly forthrightly obliterating them.

Drones are something of a passing fad. A degree of surprise and lack of preparedness has made them more effective than they ought to be. Countermeasures are coming fast.

No, Israel had air superiority. It lived on the military infantilism and imbecility of the Arabs. The Jews are nothing special, just decent citizen-soldier militia. But against the Arabs – and note here that Arab Iraq fought Persian Iran to a standstill for about a decade – that is plenty good enough.

The only real threat to Israel is Turkey, which is both militarily effective and close enough to support a large military force, while also having an air force to contend with Israel and a navy far superior to Israel’s. But the Turks are also not stupid enough to want to be nuked.

The west, less most Americans, has long since turned against Israel. They haven’t lost anything; it’s just become more obvious how few friends outside of the US they have.

That’s true, EXCEPT… the Iranians have proxies locally, in Lebanon and if they wish in Gaza. Whether they can seize and hold, and I believe they’re getting close, they require real forces to counter them. The Israelis lack anything on that scale. And Israel lacks spatial depth. That means the Iranians have deterrence, and Israel lacks it – short of responses that would have seismic effects on their international standing and future viability.

Now add: “he who can destroy a thing, he controls it.” The Iranians don’t have to wipe Israel off the map. Start with making Israel’s ports places that no insured ship will visit, which can be done with Shahed (IAI Harpy copy, to my eye) drones. What happens to Israel’s economy?

Now add small drones. Once the Palestinians have enough of the small ones, they can enact terrorism anywhere within 15 miles of the border. Start making it impossible to live within 10 miles of their borders, and (as we’ve already seen in this war), you can evacuate significant chunks of Israel as de facto no-go zones. More FPV range starts extending those zones. Looking at a map of Israel, how much of that can it afford?

Israel lived on air superiority/ supremacy as its shield. That term has had its meaning utterly changed, in ways Israel cannot at this point master. Now the Iranians have proven that they can establish deterrence and red lines which Israel must respect, while the Palestinians freely build up the arsenal required to make Israel unlivable.

Israel will need to both innovate out of this operationally and technologically, and put its house in order. It cannot survive as a society where its enemies plot the seizure of their lands, while their army & intel focuses on their role in plots re: the seizure of their government instead of countering their enemies. A seizure that, even if it succeeds, would utterly alienate the majority of their country.

All as the USA and Europe, their current core allies, are unlikely to be any sort of help past 2035. If, indeed, they aren’t outright enemies by then.

The current conflict has deeply, deeply damaged Israel’s long-term strategic prospects, because it was never conducted with that in mind. Their window to fix things is narrowing, at speed.

Why can’t they do much to each other? Logistics. Neither is capable of supporting a conventional force of sufficient size across the deserts. The Iranians can’t send any air power, AFAICT, while the 14 Israeli tankers can’t support much at that range. By way of example, we used 20 times more aerial tankers for Gulf 1 than the Jews have, and over not much more than half the range.