Rat u Iranu - kraj mula?

[tomas.hokenberi]

14 hours ago, Amigdala said:

Zbog toga je i osnovan. Kao protivteza varsavskom bloku. 

To sigurno nije posto je Varsavski blok formiran 6 godina posle NATO.

[Klotzen]

11. Marinska Ekspediciona Jedinica je takođe krenula na put prema Iranu kao i Amfibijski brod USS Boxer. Dakle imaće dva desnatna bataljona u regionu za 10-tak dana. Udarna jedinica ove grupe je 1. marinski bataljon koji je od ww2 na ovamo učestvovao u gotovo svim većim operacijama.

 

11. MEU u principu ide na redovnu dužnost jedino što je krenula 3 nedelje pre nego što je trebala u region Indo-Pacifik ali na pitanje da li idu u Iran Tramp je rekao da ne zna gde idu ali da neće govoriti gde koje jedinice šalje nadalje.

 

Priča se i o pripremama 82. padobranske divizije da će biti poslana u region. To bi već bilo previše trupa za zauzimanje tih ostrva. Doduše možda pošalju samo jednu brigadu te divizije. Videćemo da li je ovo samo info koji "curi" da se pojača pritisak na Irance ili će stvarno i njih slati.

 

Iran gađao ostrvo Diego Garsia, skoro 4000 km daleko. Jedna promašila, druga oborena. Inače ostrvo je sa lagunom 20 X 10 km tako da mi stvarno nije jasno kako može da promaši toliko veliku metu.

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Klotzen

[Barkley#34]

1 hour ago, fancy said:

 

9/10 Srbije i 3/4 Voxa: "Štae sporno?"

Ovo je poprilično učitavanje forumašima u celini.

[fancy]

Ah a to je več lično...

 

 

p.s. kad smo već kod grupnog učitavanja da dodam - ...I Srbiji (pa skoro u celini), šta košta da košta...

 

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by fancy

[berti]

1 hour ago, 40Wins said:

Šta znam, da se nisu izraelske komsije zaklinjale na smrt Izraelu, finansirale terorističke gupe koje ubijaju Jevreje i slično, mozda im sad ne bi bridela glava.

Pa dobro, onomad spasavaše svet od bioloskog i hemijskog naoruzanja, danas od nuklearnog.

A finansiranje terorizma... Pa zbog najveceg terorističkog napada u istoriji građani USA tuze drzavu SA. Ne pojedinca, nego državu. Pa Rijadu nije bridela glava... Ako si jaran, mozes da ubijaš i moje građane, nece ti biti vatrometa iznad glave.

Sada ce rokati po mulama, proglasice pobedu kao što su je proglasili u Afganistanu. Pa ce svi oni koji su se u Teheranu ponadali da ce bradata govna pasti i otvoreno iskazivali bunt proci kao jadnici u Kabulu koji su ostavljeni da budu izmasakrirani.

Ali ce se zato valjda Izrael osetiti bezbedno. 

 

[Dzoni_m]

@fancyBez okolisanja: sad si vec bezobrzan i prelazis granicu. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Dzoni_m

[Amigdala]

41 minutes ago, tomas.hokenberi said:

To sigurno nije posto je Varsavski blok formiran 6 godina posle NATO.

Cenim kad neko pazljivo cita i analizira napisano. 👍 

U prravu si, dakle.

Ja sam varaavski blok vise koristio kao sinegdohu,  eufemizam za staljinizam i boljesvicki ekspanzionizam. 

 

[DameTime]

15 minutes ago, fancy said:

p.s. kad smo već kod grupnog učitavanja da dodam - ...I Srbiji (pa skoro u celini), šta košta da košta...

 

Jesi to koristio tačkasti softver? 

[Stiletto]

Čak i ukoliko si manjina, istina je ipak istina. – Mahatma Gandi

[djura.net]

Otprilike 140 miliona barela Iranske nafte ce biti uskoro na trzistu, posto je USA skinula sankcije na iransku naftu, kako kaze Mike Waltz 'very temporary'.

 

Pa kaze, 140 miliona, puta 110 dolara jednako - lepa svotica. Moze lepo da se zaradi, mozda cak i da se kupi neki avion Trumpu?

 

Prosle nedelje se oko 100 miliona tona ruske nafte naslo na trzistu, a za sledecu nedelju bi mogli nekako i da 'caste' Severnu Koreju, ne ide da samo jedan autoritarni rezim ne oseti blagodet rada aktuelne americke administracije.  

 

Sve ide po planu.

[fancy]

39 minutes ago, DameTime said:

 

Jesi to koristio tačkasti softver? 

 

Ne, zezao sam se ako nisi primetila.

 

Kao onda kad je bilo moderno za neistomišljenike reći "Trampisti" (produžena ruka ili tako nešto) i sl., šala je šala, nećemo sad valjda to zabranjivati ili nedajbože kenselovati? 

 

 

[Angelia]

1 hour ago, Dzoni_m said:

@fancyBez okolisanja: sad si vec bezobrzan i prelazis granicu. 

Ja sam mislila da je 100% tacan, jesam nesto propustila? Ne razumem uvek lokalni sleng 😀

[Nicklord]

3 hours ago, fancy said:

 

9/10 Srbije i 3/4 Voxa: "Štae sporno?"

Gde su ti ljudi na Voxu? Ja vidim da ljudima smeta to što je USA očigledno uletela u rat bez plana i sada ćemo svi da ispaštamo zbog toga, a ljudi u Iranu najviše (okačio si video par postova iznad)

[djura.net]

bbc

 

The former commander of UK Joint Forces Command says the UK "needs to be certain" if two missiles fired at the joint US-UK military base Diego Garcia were launched from Iran.

 

General Sir Richard Barrons tells the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that it was previously thought that Iran's missiles had a range of 2,000km (1,243 miles) but the base is about 3,800km (2,361 miles) from Iran.

[fancy]

2 hours ago, Angelia said:

Ja sam mislila da je 100% tacan, jesam nesto propustila? Ne razumem uvek lokalni sleng 😀

 

I jesam, nisi ništa propustila. 

Tramp (poznatiji kao: tranp, trupac, ag. Krasnov, /and my personal favorite/ narandžasti idiot ) je "dao alibi" mnogima u Srbiji da im konačno lakne i da mogu mirne duše kao i 90% ovdašnje populacije da mrze Ameriku bez zadrške i nekog "jao, ipak smo bili saveznici u WW II"  okolišanja. A još kad je izdo cBeto KocoBo...   A taman su se neki ponadali da je drugačiji od KlinKtona 😢

Ergo, Amerika propo.

 

Naravno, pre toga su se polomili kako bi poslali decu na najsigurnije moguće mesto da nastave školovanje, život, itd...u Ameriku  ...i pokojeg evropskog saveznika

 

Znam gde živim, znam s kim radim, nisam od juče. 😉

 

2 hours ago, Nicklord said:

Gde su ti ljudi na Voxu?

 

Pa na Voxu

Raćunica jeste otprilike ali ima smisla - Ako pretpostavimo da je (geografski) srpski deo Voxa preslikan po stavovima iz generalne populacije, i na to dodamo ljude koji se javljaju iz inostranstva kao nešto manje zadrte po pitanju Amerike, onda je logično pretpostaviti da 90% koje sam iskustveno poklonio majci Srbiji padne na nekih 75% ili ti 3/4. Možda je manje, možda je nešto više, ali toeto ugrubo.

[Bul-Kathos]

 

How Iran Sees the War

External Escalation, Internal Consolidation

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/how-iran-sees-war

 

Spoiler

How Iran Sees the War

External Escalation, Internal Consolidation

Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

March 20, 2026

At the funeral of Iranian security chief Ali Larijani, Tehran, March 2026  Alaa Al Marjani / Reuters

MOHAMMAD AYATOLLAHI TABAAR is Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, a Nonresident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran.

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After years of condemnations, sanctions, and small-scale attacks, in late February, the United States and Israel finally launched a large-scale war on Iran. In the time since, U.S. and Israeli forces have assassinated Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with many other senior officials and destroyed many of the country’s military installations, government buildings, airports, energy facilities, and civilian infrastructure. Now, three weeks into the campaign, U.S. and Israeli leaders are persistently predicting that Iran is on the verge of military defeat and that its regime will come out of the war either significantly weakened or swept aside.

Washington and Israel are right that their bombs have wreaked havoc on Iran’s military capabilities. But if they believe that Tehran is about to keel over, they are probably mistaken. The Islamic Republic has maintained remarkable cohesion since the attacks started. Its command-and-control system remains intact, even though it has lost many leaders. It has retained enough firepower to launch missile strikes against U.S. bases, Israel, and various Persian Gulf Arab countries. And it swiftly named the elder Khamenei’s hard-line son Mojtaba as its new supreme leader.

This resilience should not come as a surprise. For more than two decades—since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and especially since the 12-day war last June—Tehran has been preparing for a large U.S. attack and signaling that it would respond with fury. It based its strategy on a plan to cause maximum chaos in hopes of restoring deterrence—which is exactly what it has done.

Iran is also using the war to bolster its domestic position. Before the bombings began, the regime had grown deeply unpopular at home and was subject to repeated mass protests that it could suppress only with increasing repression. But beyond providing further justification for a more brutal crackdown, the war with Washington affords it a potential new source of legitimacy. The conflict has allowed Iran’s leaders to argue that they are bravely standing up to foreign invaders. It is fostering a sense of cohesion akin to the one that took root after the Iran-Iraq War. The bombings, after all, are killing both military personnel and civilians, generating a culture of martyrdom that is sweeping across Iranian cities.

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How this scenario unfolds remains uncertain. The Islamic Republic was facing serious internal resistance before the war began—so much so that many Iranians welcomed outside intervention. Even if Tehran gets a bounce in support now, the destruction Iran has incurred will only compound its governance challenges. And the United States could ultimately decide to launch a ground invasion and carry out regime change itself.

But Iranian officials, at least, see an upside to the bombings. To them, the war with the United States and Israel is an opportunity—not just a hazard.

BARK AND BITE

Over the course of the last decade, many U.S. officials came to a fateful conclusion about the Islamic Republic: for all its fiery rhetoric, it was, in reality, weak and cautious. Iranian officials, after all, had absorbed blow after blow without doing much in response. When Israel spent years assassinating Iranian officers in Syria and targeting nuclear scientists, the country’s leaders did nothing except condemn the deaths. After Israel attacked the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus in April 2024, Tehran launched a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles at Israeli territory, but almost all of its projectiles were intercepted. In July of that year, Iranian leaders remained almost entirely silent after Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran sent another volley at Israel after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. But this attack was also mostly neutralized. And Iran refrained from meaningful retaliation after Washington bombed the Iranian nuclear program in June 2025. Eventually, even the Islamic Republic’s allies began doubting whether Tehran was willing to fight against its enemies—particularly given that Iran sometimes telegraphed its attacks in advance through intermediaries.

The Islamic Republic’s choices reflected a persistent dilemma in Iranian strategy. Tehran needed to demonstrate to its regional allies that it was a credible partner, not one that expected its Arab allies to bear the costs of confronting Israel while Iran itself stayed on the sidelines. But it simultaneously had to avoid steps that might provoke a direct Israeli attack on its territory, particularly at a time when much of the Iranian public was skeptical of the regime and its regional policies.

As a result, actions taken to solve one problem often created another. Iranian strikes against Israel were intended less to deter Israel than to reassure regional allies. Their largely performative character helped temporarily reassure those partners, but that same performative quality reinforced adversaries’ perceptions that Iran was weak and incapable of inflicting serious damage. This is partly why Washington and Israel repeatedly chose to attack even when Tehran was open to nuclear talks. (The June bombing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, for example, took place in the middle of negotiations.) In time, Iranian officials determined that the government had to respond to future attacks with much more aggression. Otherwise, Washington and Israel would not stop harming Iran unless the government completely capitulated.

When Israel spent years assassinating Iranian officers, Tehran did nothing.

Tehran thus shifted its military strategy away from a doctrine of forward defense—or confronting its adversaries via proxies and beyond its borders—and toward one geared toward raw offense. It planned to retaliate against attackers using a mix of conventional and unconventional capabilities. Rather than pursuing slow escalation and limited responses, Iran decided that if it were attacked, it would escalate rapidly and expand the conflict beyond Israel to the entire Middle East, with the aim of inflicting pain on the global economy.

Tehran didn’t make this shift a secret. Before his assassination, Khamenei repeatedly and publicly warned that U.S. “miscalculations” about Iran’s weakness needed to be corrected. He called for military exercises and demonstrations of strength intended to establish deterrence. In late 2025, Iranian officials also asserted that the country had used only 20 percent of its capabilities during the June war and hinted that Tehran was prepared to tap additional strategic capabilities in a next round of conflict—specifically referring to the Persian Gulf as a potential theater of escalation. Naval forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s regular navy began preparing for a range of operations in the Gulf, conducting exercises that signaled that Tehran was developing contingency plans to close the Strait of Hormuz if fighting resumed.

At the same time, some Iranian officials implicitly criticized Hezbollah for responding to Israel’s 2024 assault by striking only a few kilometers into Israeli territory rather than 100 kilometers, suggesting that Iran itself intended to escalate much more aggressively from the outset during any future conflict. Yet despite these signals—and to Tehran’s consternation—the United States and Israel continued to see Iran as cautious, weak, and easy to attack.

The result is the current conflict. The two countries struck Iran in February using more firepower than ever. Tehran, in turn, responded by continuously firing thousands of missiles and drones at targets throughout the Middle East. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing oil prices around the world to skyrocket. And it has threatened to coordinate with its Houthi allies in Yemen to disrupt traffic through the Bab el Mandeb Strait between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, which would throw even more supply chains into chaos. The outcome could be a worldwide economic crisis. Iranian leaders perceive the conflict as one in which few rules apply. In Tehran’s view, U.S. and Israeli actions such as the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader—carried out during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan—have rendered nearly every target fair game.

A FAMILIAR PATTERN

Iranian leaders believe that fighting back hard will ultimately protect the country from the United States and Israel by teaching both states that striking the Islamic Republic has meaningful consequences. But they also think the war will shore up the regime at home. Iran’s last war, after all, helped its leaders consolidate power. When the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, the country was engulfed in postrevolutionary upheaval—the Islamic Republic had been established just a year earlier—and internal factional conflict. Saddam thus expected a swift victory against a weakened and divided adversary. What he did not anticipate was that the Iranian leadership might welcome the invasion precisely because of those internal divisions—as it did. According to Iran’s first postrevolutionary president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, when the war began, then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini told officials that Iran’s victory would lead to the “complete consolidation” of the Islamic Republic against its internal opponents.

Khomeini proved partially correct. Although Iran did not win the war—it lasted eight years and ended in a cease-fire—the conflict shocked Iranian society, unleashing new emotions, identities, and forms of mobilization that ultimately strengthened the revolutionary government. The Islamic Republic used Shiite symbolism and the ostensible martyrdom of soldiers and civilians to portray the regime as a defender of the country and a protector of a popular revolution, spurring a rally-around-the-flag effect. Hundreds of thousands of young Iranians opted to enlist with the military. In fact, the war did such a good job at helping the regime consolidate power that it attempted to invade Iraq after successfully expelling Saddam’s forces rather than declare victory and call it quits. That offensive failed, but the domestic support lasted. In trying to break up the Islamic Republic, Saddam inadvertently entrenched it.

Today’s conflict could follow the same pattern—or at least that is what the Islamic Republic’s leaders appear to believe. Like Iraq, the United States and Israel appear to have seen Iran’s internal tensions as an opportunity to weaken or topple the government: Washington began its military buildup in response to the recent protests. Like Khomeini, Khamenei might have interpreted the buildup and coming attack as a pathway to strengthen the Islamic Republic. For years and well before the bombings began, Khamenei frequently invoked memories of the Iran-Iraq War to illustrate how wartime experiences would make individuals more spiritual—and thus more supportive of Iran’s theocratic government.

The Iran-Iraq war helped the Islamic Republic consolidate power.

And over the last few weeks, the government has mobilized large numbers of Iranians. It has, for example, successfully encouraged sizable crowds to gather in major squares across Iranian cities in support of the state. These citizens by no means speak for all Iranians; it is likely that a large majority prefer a secular government—particularly if a peaceful path to such a transition were available. But the regime believes that popular resentment of its protest suppression is being eclipsed by admiration for the sacrifices of wartime martyrs, such as the nearly 200 children and teachers who were killed when a U.S. missile struck an Iranian girls’ school. One trauma, in other words, is being replaced by another.

The Islamic Republic also believes the war could help consolidate support for the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, much as the Iran-Iraq War helped empower his father. Ali Khamenei was a relatively minor political figure when that conflict began, but the death of many other Iranian leaders meant that just one year into the Iraqi invasion, he was elected president. During the war, he and other Islamist clerics marginalized rivals while helping expand the IRGC from a small, loosely organized force into a central pillar of the state. Khamenei also raised his public profile by presenting himself as a wartime leader, regularly visiting the front and delivering speeches to mobilize both fighters and the broader population.

When the conflict ended and Khomeini died, elites thus chose him to be supreme leader. A similar dynamic already appears to be unfolding with Mojtaba. For years, the younger Khamenei remained behind the scenes. Many Iranians barely know what he looks like or what his voice sounds like. But in a moment of crisis, when experienced leaders have been killed and the regime is prioritizing loyalty and cohesion over formal credentials, Mojtaba’s close ties to the security apparatus—particularly the IRGC—appear to have become an asset. Even as reports suggest that he has been injured and has not appeared publicly, at pro-Islamic Republic demonstrations, people have pledged allegiance to him. The war, in other words, may be helping transform a largely opaque figure into a symbol of continuity and resistance.

THE TWO WARS

It is, of course, unclear if Iran’s strategy will prove effective. The United States and Israel remain unbowed by the rising costs of the war, at least so far. The millions of Iranians who hated the regime before the war began may blame the Islamic Republic as much as the United States and Israel for the bombings. But the pain from the conflict has just started. As images emerge of dead Iranian civilians and soldiers and devastated infrastructure, the public may grow increasingly furious at foreign attackers and fearful the conflict will lead to state collapse instead of regime change. If so, they may indeed focus less on the regime’s recent brutality and massacre of protesters.

But what is clear is this: Iran is fighting a fundamentally different kind of war than its adversaries. The United States and Israel are attempting to weaken the state from above via decapitation strikes and destruction of the country’s infrastructure. But the Islamic Republic is working from below, mobilizing supporters and reshaping public sentiment through wartime nationalism. It wants to defeat its enemies on the battlefield. But it is just as focused on consolidating its position at home.

 

 

The Two Israels

A Socioeconomic Divide Shapes the Country’s Politics—and Its Aggressive Foreign Policy

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/two-israels

 

Spoiler

The Two Israels

A Socioeconomic Divide Shapes the Country’s Politics—and Its Aggressive Foreign Policy

Eran Yashiv

March 20, 2026

A protest against mandatory military service, Bnei Brak, Israel, February 2026 Nir Elias / Reuters

ERAN YASHIV is Professor of Economics at Tel Aviv University, a member of the Center for Macroeconomics at the London School of Economics, and a former head of the National Security and Economics Program at the Institute for National Security Studies.

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Imagine two Middle Eastern countries. The first is very unlike the rest of the region. It is economically highly productive, with a GDP per capita of $80,000—the highest in the Middle East. It has excellent universities and a highly developed technology sector. Its people do not agree on everything, but they are broadly supportive of liberal democracy.

The second is far more like its neighbors. A significant share of its population is not employed, and what jobs its people do have are often low-skill and pay poorly. At $35,000, its GDP per capita is less than half that of the first economy. The religiosity of its population ranges between traditional and deeply religious, and educational attainment is relatively low. Most of its residents seem indifferent to, or actively against, liberal values.

These two countries are, in fact, the same country: Israel. The state may be overwhelmingly Jewish. But it is Balkanized between a well-educated, high-earning population and an undereducated, low-earning one. The former group is responsible for most of the country’s tax revenues and wealth. It generally opposes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing nationalist government. The latter is disproportionately made up of the ultra-Orthodox, who have the highest jobless rates in the country, and religious nationalists; both groups are heavily represented in the Netanyahu government.

This divide is already damaging Israeli society. It is part of why the country is so politically polarized and why its governments constantly fall apart. (Israel has had five elections in the last six years.) But as time goes on, it will only make life for the Jewish state harder. The share of the liberal, high-productivity part of the country’s population is shrinking, while that of the conservative, low-productivity part is growing. As a result, the Israeli tax base will erode. Far-right, religious politicians will continue to gain power. Israel, in turn, will become poorer and more repressive at home, and it is already becoming more aggressive abroad, as evidenced by the war it recently launched with Iran, in partnership with the United States. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, deemed genocidal by many in the West, was another show of aggression. As are Israel’s increasing violent provocations in the West Bank.

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These processes will also make Israel more like other countries in the region—including its archnemesis, Iran. Tehran’s decades-long hostility and aggression toward Israel is rooted in fundamentalist religious ideology. But Israel’s right-wing government is also in thrall to a messianic agenda, and it was eager for a full-scale war with Iran—and thrilled when U.S. President Donald Trump, by pledging American support, made it possible to wage one.

THE PRODUCTIVITY GAP

Israeli society is made up of a patchwork of different groups, each with distinct interests. But its divide is encapsulated by two communities. The first is composed of high-tech workers. They constitute roughly ten percent of Israel’s workforce, but they generate close to one-fifth of the country’s GDP—in large part because the tech industry is more than twice as productive as is the rest of the economy. This reflects the sector’s impressive human capital, its deep integration into global markets, and its strong research networks. The industry accounts for approximately half of Israel’s service exports and about a quarter of government tax revenues. It is, in other words, the primary source of the state’s fiscal capacity and external resilience. At the opposite end of the economy are the ultra-Orthodox. Only 54 percent of ultra-Orthodox men are employed. When they do work, it is mostly in low-skill occupations, and their earnings are on average only about half that of non-Orthodox Jewish men. Ultra-Orthodox women have an 81 percent employment rate, similar to non-Orthodox Jewish women, but earn on average a third less; many of the jobs they hold are low-skill and part-time.

Approximately one-third of ultra-Orthodox households live below the poverty line, compared with about 14 percent among other Jewish households. These unfortunate figures are partially the result of individual choices. But they are also the product of institutionalized arrangements. Ultra-Orthodox men, for example, are largely exempt from military service, which means that they skip participating in an institution that plays a key role in facilitating labor-market integration and social cohesion. The ultra-Orthodox are also segregated from Israel’s mainstream education system. Instead, they attend schools that prioritize religious studies and exclude core subjects such as mathematics, science, and English. This structure effectively channels large numbers of young men either into lifelong religious study or marginal employment. Ultra-Orthodox women bear an enormous burden, having to run large households and take on part-time work. Because ultra-Orthodox households earn relatively little, they pay few or no taxes and rely on public social spending and funding from ultra-Orthodox communities in New York and London.

Israel’s economic divide maps closely onto the nation’s political polarization.

The ultra-Orthodox are not the only Israeli demographic that struggles with low productivity. The country’s Arab minority, which makes up roughly 20 percent of its population, is also disproportionately employed in low-wage jobs. Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, Arab Israelis are not locked out of Israel’s advanced economic sectors because of their own decisions and community structures. Rather, they face such pervasive discrimination, and investment in their infrastructure is so poor, that they struggle to get high-quality education and high-skill employment. As a result, they do not have access to the same employment opportunities as do their Jewish counterparts.

The ultra-Orthodox are growing in their share of Israel’s population. Currently, they account for around 14 percent of Israel’s population, but the total fertility rate among ultra-Orthodox Israeli women is roughly 6.5 children, compared to only two among secular Jewish women and 3.7 for religious Jewish women, another fast-growing group. That means that ultra-Orthodox Jews are on track to make up more than one-fifth of the country’s population by the mid-2040s and close to one-third by the 2060s.

This trend will make it extremely difficult for Israel to sustain high levels of GDP per capita as time goes on. It isn’t hard to see why: a shrinking high-productivity group cannot indefinitely finance a rapidly growing low-productivity one. Eventually, the government will begin struggling to finance public goods—including educational institutions, the health-care system, physical infrastructure, and the military. Individuals and firms may well respond by relocating capital and labor abroad.

In fact, this shift is already happening. In 2023–24, around 100,000 Israelis emigrated; according to a recent study by the economists Itai Ater, Nittai Bergman, and Doron Zamir, many of those who left were high-skilled professionals in medicine, engineering, academia, and technology. Historical experience suggests that such losses will be difficult to reverse. (During and after its early 2010s debt crisis, for example, Greece lost nearly five percent of its population, much of which never came back.) The outward migration will compound Israel’s existing fiscal pressures by further eroding the tax base. Policymakers will have to impose higher taxes on the remaining workers, prompting more to depart. Credit-rating agencies might downgrade Israeli debt, leading to increased borrowing costs that further constrain Israel’s policy options. The result would be a classic vicious cycle of lower investment, slower growth, and declining living standards.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

Israel’s economic divide maps closely onto the nation’s political polarization. Israelis in the high-productivity sector overwhelmingly support liberal democratic institutions, including an independent judiciary, free media, and constraints on executive power. In contrast, lower-productivity groups increasingly support parties that weaken these institutions and constraints.

The ultra-Orthodox parties have natural partners in Israel’s ultranationalist religious (but not ultra-Orthodox) parties. These parties represent roughly 15 percent of Israel’s population, a segment that is economically stronger than the ultra-Orthodox. They aim to replace the civil, secular judicial system by rabbinical courts, weaken judicial review, and expand Israeli control over the West Bank. Although these objectives are not the key ones for the ultra-Orthodox, who are more focused on entrenching exemptions from military service, expanding welfare transfers, and preserving their religious education system, they go along. Both groups benefit from weakening liberal-democratic institutions and centralizing power.

Netanyahu has connected these two groups. He has long-standing relationships with leaders from each community, and he has tried to advance their respective agendas. His current coalition features two ultra-Orthodox parties and two ultranationalist parties, the latter led by extremist figures. Since January 2023, they have been carrying out a coordinated attack on the judiciary, curbing checks on executive authority, and redirecting budgetary resources toward political supporters. They are, in other words, trying to systematically alter Israel’s constitutional balance.

Absent a dramatic change in course, Israel will become poorer, less democratic, and more fragmented.

This agenda has, naturally, outraged Israel’s moderates and liberals, who have repeatedly taken to the streets to protest. The demonstrators have exhibited commendable tenacity, and they have managed to delay many of Netanyahu’s bills. But the prime minister’s agenda feels increasingly inevitable. His government has steadily weakened Israel’s democratic institutions, and it is marching ahead with many of its most controversial laws. Even the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, which occurred under Netanyahu’s rule, hasn’t derailed this agenda. The prime minister’s popularity plummeted in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, but eventually, he managed to use the tragedy to consolidate power by mobilizing Israelis’ fear and anger and waging war in Gaza. He also kept his coalition together by acceding to demands from his extremist political partners and providing the ultra-Orthodox with large amounts of budgetary support, despite growing fiscal strain.

Indeed, in recent weeks and months, the protests have diminished and the government has pressed ahead with numerous parliamentary bills that erode democracy and that continue to use national resources to benefit the parties in the coalition. Meanwhile, a constitutional crisis is looming, as government ministers and the Knesset speaker, breaking with protocol and practice, no longer invite the president of the Supreme Court to key state events. Crucially, government ministers refuse to rule out the possibility of not abiding by Supreme Court decisions. To make matters worse, the government has tabled a new bill redefining the role of a vital civil servant, the legal counselor to the government, who is also the attorney general. The new bill effectively downgrades the role and strips it of independence by separating the attorney and counselor roles and by making the latter a purely political appointment. If the bill passes, it will remove the most important defense against democratic backsliding that has hollowed out Israeli democracy over the past three years.

Academic research shows that when electoral behavior is anchored in group belonging rather than policy evaluation—as it is in Israel—group loyalties and perceived status differences shape voters’ preferences more than economic circumstances. As a result, even as Israel’s economy grows worse, support for the country’s nationalist and religious parties will stay strong.

TROUBLE AHEAD

For Israelis, then, the future looks bleak. Absent a dramatic change in course, the country will become poorer, less democratic, and more fragmented in the years to come. It might also become more militaristic. As the country’s economy wobbles, its nationalistic politicians will be tempted to pursue ever more aggressive external policies as a way of rallying Israelis around the flag.

Indeed, Netanyahu will capitalize on the ongoing conflict with Iran to strengthen his coalition’s prospects in the parliamentary elections later this year. If public support for his coalition improves, he will seek to hold elections as early as June. If the coalition continues to trail in the polls, he may declare a state of emergency and delay elections. This is a classic case of a populist government using war for political survival—and destabilizing the region in the process.

Iran’s trajectory offers a revealing parallel. In terms of GDP per capita, Iran and Israel were relatively close in the 1960s and early 1970s. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran experienced a sharp decline and prolonged stagnation as the Iranian leadership turned the country into a theocracy, diverted academic research and public resources to military issues, suppressed civil liberties, and destroyed the secular judicial system. Today, Iran has a tenth of the Israeli GDP per capita—and yet its political system has remained largely intact for 47 years. Iran’s experience thus demonstrates that incompetent regimes grounded in religious authoritarianism can persist, despite severe economic consequences. Israel, unbelievably, is now taking a similar path.

There is still hope for the Jewish state. Israel’s mass protest movement has demonstrated that the country retains a vibrant and powerful civil society, and that its people are capable of action outside formal electoral channels. Such engagement remains one of the few defenses against economic stagnation and a further descent into illiberalism. If Israel’s business leaders, especially in the high-tech sector, mobilize, they may be able to stop the slide downhill. Jewish communities around the world and liberal foreign governments may help, too. But this much is certain: Israel has a tough road ahead.

 

[Angelia]

2 hours ago, Nicklord said:

Gde su ti ljudi na Voxu? Ja vidim da ljudima smeta to što je USA očigledno uletela u rat bez plana i sada ćemo svi da ispaštamo zbog toga, a ljudi u Iranu najviše (okačio si video par postova iznad)

Bez plana? Ljudi u Iranu slave, igraju po ulicama I navijaju gde ce sledeca bomba da padne. I odakle mislis da izraelci dobijaju tako precizne informacije da pojedinacno ubijaju clanove rezima. 

Mislis da je cela vojna masinerija USA otisla tamo bez plana? Ako jeste stvarno im odlicno ide bez planiranja.

[berti]

Jeste, kao što su u Srbiji baljezgali da ljudi stavljaju lokatore 1999.

[Angelia]

13 minutes ago, berti said:

Jeste, kao što su u Srbiji baljezgali da ljudi stavljaju lokatore 1999.

Nije ceo svet, Srbija

[akisaki]

28 minutes ago, Angelia said:

Bez plana? Ljudi u Iranu slave, igraju po ulicama I navijaju gde ce sledeca bomba da padne. I odakle mislis da izraelci dobijaju tako precizne informacije da pojedinacno ubijaju clanove rezima. 

Mislis da je cela vojna masinerija USA otisla tamo bez plana? Ako jeste stvarno im odlicno ide bez planiranja.

I usput nastavljaju sa ubijanjem dece kao sto to cine godinama po Gazi.Kako kazes da imaju precizne informacije moze se zakljuciti da zlocinacki rezim iz Izraela namerno to radi.