By Avi Drori, Sr. Contributor June 1, 2026 There is a thought experiment that exposes a great deal about the state of American political discourse. It takes about thirty seconds, and it is devastating in its clarity. Imagine Joe Rogan devoting three hours of podcast time to the outsized influence of the Knights of Columbus on Republican politics. Imagine Tucker Carlson running a primetime segment asking whether American Catholics owe their first loyalty to Washington or to Ro

By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor April 8, 2026 The two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, brokered not by American diplomacy but by Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif, marks a turning point far more consequential than any battlefield outcome. Regardless of how it is branded — "total and complete victory," as President Trump insists — what happened on April 7, 2026 is a de facto American defeat, and every capital from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi knows it. Consider the facts. Iran's

By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor March 27, 2026 ​History is a relentless teacher, and for Israel, the lesson has always been clear: survival cannot be outsourced. As we navigate the current existential campaign, it is vital to remember that the "Israel First" policy is not a modern provocation, but a historical necessity. From the very dawn of its independence, Israel has flourished only when it prioritized its own security over the fickle winds of international diplomacy. ​A

By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor March 20, 2026 ​For decades, Western strategy toward Iran has focused on Tehran as the ultimate prize. However, Tehran is a sprawling, cosmopolitan paradox—home to both the machinery of state and a massive, tech-savvy population that often stands in direct opposition to it. To understand the regime’s true "center of gravity," one must look to Qom and Mashhad . ​If Tehran is the brain of the Islamic Republic, Qom is its soul and Mashhad is its

March 6, 2026 By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor The official justification is regime change. But the war's most urgent, unresolved problem is 400 kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium — and nobody knows where it is. When Donald Trump announced, at 2:30 in the morning on February 28, 2026, that the United States had launched a "massive and ongoing operation" against Iran, he framed it in the familiar language of American intervention: Iran posed a menace, had rejected every

February 20, 2026 By Avi Drori, Sr. Contributor ​The foundational principle of an "America First" foreign policy has always been the cold-eyed pursuit of American interests over the abstract ideals of globalism. For too long, Washington has treated the Islamic Republic of Iran as a manageable nuisance or a diplomatic puzzle to be solved with pallets of cash and sunset clauses. In 2026, as the world teeters on the edge of a new era of great power competition, it is time to rec

February 20, 2026 By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor The conventional narrative holds that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey oppose the Islamic Republic out of sectarian rivalry or regional competition. But look closer at the quiet panic spreading through these capitals whenever serious talk of Iranian regime change surfaces, and a different picture emerges — one rooted not in what Iran is, but in what a free Iran could become. A secular, post-theocratic Iran would be one of the

February 9, 2026 By Avi Drori, Sr. Contributor. ​In our cultural rush to condemn sexual predators, we have traded linguistic precision for emotional shorthand. We use the word "pedophile" as a catch-all slur for anyone involved in a sexual offense with a minor. While the impulse to use the harshest possible label is understandable, this linguistic drift is doing something dangerous: it is whitewashing the specific, unique horror of pedophilia. ​To fix our response to these c

A recent report on U.S. infrastructure investments revealed a staggering statistic: roughly 40% of future power grid spending is now being driven by the projected demand from Data Centers and AI applications. ​While the scale of that investment is eye-opening, the deeper truth it reveals is even more profound. We aren't just consuming more electricity; we are entering an era where energy and the digital world are becoming indistinguishable. ​From "The Grid" to the "Energy of

The Middle East is currently witnessing a tectonic shift that few predicted a decade ago. As the Iranian regime—the long-standing vanguard of revolutionary "Jihadism"—faces internal protests and external military pressure, its grip on the region’s ideological export seems to be loosening. Simultaneously, however, a different kind of instability is brewing across the Persian Gulf. The question is no longer just whether Iran’s influence is waning, but whether the vacuum will be

​22/1/2026 מאת: אבי דרורי ​מדינת ישראל של 2024 אינה המדינה הקטנה והמוקפת של 1948. מאז הקמתה, ישראל חוותה זינוק דמוגרפי, הצמיחה את התמ"ג שלה לממדים של מעצמה אזורית וביססה עוצמה מדינית וטכנולוגית חסרת תקדים. ולמרות זאת, באורח פלא, תפיסת הביטחון הלאומית שלנו לא עברה שינוי מהותי מאז ימי בן גוריון. ​במשך עשורים, מערכת הביטחון נבנתה בתהליך אבולוציוני – טלאי על טלאי, בהתבסס על מה שהיה, וכמעט ללא התייחסות למה שצפוי. אירועי ה-7 באוקטובר והמלחמה שבעקבותיהם אינם רק קריאת השכמה טקטית; הם

January 10, 2026 by Avi Drori Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently dropped a geopolitical bombshell in an interview with The Economist , declaring his intention to taper US military aid to Israel to zero over the next decade. While framed as a move toward "independence," this declaration is also a calculated political maneuver designed to silence a growing chorus of detractors in the American Right. Influential pundits like Tucker

January 24, 2026 ​By Avi Drori For the past five years, the geopolitical architecture of the Middle East has been defined by a single, overriding logic: containment. The Abraham Accords and the subsequent formation of the I2U2 group (India, Israel, UAE, and the US) were hailed as a breakthrough in "minilateralism"—a coalition of the willing designed to bypass the region's dysfunction. But let us be honest about what glued this diverse quartet together. It was not just trade c

​ January 17, 2026 ​ By Avi Drori ​The Persian Gulf is simmering, Twitter is ablaze with all-caps warnings of "FIRE AND FURY," and the protests in Tehran have reached a fever pitch. To the casual observer—and indeed, to many of the hawkish voices currently filling the Situation Room—it looks like the countdown has begun. The pieces are moving. The rhetoric is escalating. The "assurances" are on the desk: the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and a phalanx of consultants a

January 24, 2026 By Avi Drori For decades, the geopolitical narrative of the Middle East has been defined by the "Great Divide"—a Manichean struggle between a revolutionary Shiite Iran and a status-quo Sunni bloc led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. To Western observers, the solution seems intuitive: the fall of the Islamic Republic would remove the region’s primary "spoiler," paving the way for a liberal, secular Iran that would naturally align with the U.S., Israel, an