Over the last two weeks, we have seen the war expand far beyond a limited exchange of strikes and counterstrikes. What we are witnessing now is not simply a campaign to degrade Iranian military capability. It is becoming, in very real terms, a campaign designed to push the regime toward collapse and replacement. That does not mean the outcome is guaranteed, and it certainly does not mean the road ahead will be simple, but the center of gravity in this war is clearly changing.
For days now, I have been listening to what I call the black-pill conservatives, the people who always seem to predict disaster, who have spent this conflict insisting that Israel is on the verge of destruction, that the United States is walking blindly into catastrophe, and that any effort to break the back of the Iranian regime will end in humiliation. I have very little patience for that kind of fatalism, especially when it is delivered from a safe distance by men who have no skin in the game and no real feel for what is happening on the ground. That is why I wanted to hear directly from somebody who is actually there, so I reached out to Chris Mitchell, the Jerusalem bureau chief for CBN, and asked him to give me a quick, straightforward assessment of what life looks like in Israel right now.
What Chris described was not an image of a country collapsing under unbearable pressure. He described a nation that is still taking fire, still hearing sirens, still seeing interceptions overhead, and still dealing with shrapnel falling dangerously close to homes and historic neighborhoods, but he also described a society that remains remarkably resilient. The missile volume is down from where it was at the outset of the war, even though the attacks have not stopped. Interceptions continue over Jerusalem, debris still lands in populated areas, and cluster munitions remain a very real danger, but the spirit of the Israeli people has not broken. In fact, the mood he described was exactly what you would expect from a country that understands the stakes. Israelis do not want this war ended prematurely. They want it prosecuted to a real conclusion, one in which the regime in Tehran is either removed or reduced to the point that it no longer poses a threat to Israel or to its neighbors.
That matters, because there are a great many people online trying to sell the fantasy that Israel is secretly being devastated, that casualty numbers are being hidden, and that the public is on the verge of demanding surrender. Chris dismissed that outright, and from everything else I’m seeing, he is right to do so. Israel has taken some damage, and every death is a tragedy, but this idea that the country is being brought to its knees is nonsense. He pointed out something else that is worth paying attention to as well: the Israeli stock market is doing extremely well. That may sound like a side note, but it is not. Markets are not perfect moral indicators, but they do tell you something about confidence, and right now confidence inside Israel is not collapsing. It is growing.
The reason for that confidence is straightforward. Israel and the United States are not merely reacting anymore. They are shaping the battlefield, and President Trump in particular has spent the last twenty-four hours sending a very clear message to Tehran that the war can still get far worse for them. Up until now, the overwhelming majority of the strikes have been focused on military targets, command nodes, launch sites, production capacity, and the infrastructure of repression. But Trump has made it clear that if Iran continues trying to choke off the Strait of Hormuz and weaponize the global energy market, the next phase of pressure may extend to critical infrastructure that the regime desperately needs in order to function.
