Name: Iran resilient despite strikes, Israel divided beneath surface, analysts say
Uploaded: 2026-03-22T21:32:14.000Z
Duration: 6 min 10 s
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We can speak to Alan Saleh here, who is a senior lecturer of Iranian Studies at the Australian National University.

And also in Tel Aviv, we have Ari Goldberg, who's an Israeli political commentator.

First of all, for me, so the Israeli leadership, as we've just been hearing, defiant in the face of this latest strike from Iran.

But I'm wondering just how resilient the nation as a whole to.

Is to this kind of attack, despite the overall support for the war in Iran.

By the way, if you hear sirens as I speak, we've been given an advance warning, so they might be operating.

The general Israeli population again supports the war en masse at a collective level.

Privately, I think cracks are most definitely showing.

But once again, the most effective Israeli repressive machine in terms of repressing negative thoughts like why are we fighting this war?

I think that's what Prime Minister Netanyahu is also trying to do.

He's trying to suggest that anyone who doesn't support this war is, well, a fifth columnist and so on and so forth.

I understand President Trump is doing the same because I heard he said that following the death of Iran, America's greatest enemy is the Democratic Party.

People don't really understand where this war is going, but

the discourse is already steamrolling towards a direction where if you don't support the war and you're a traitor to the nation.

What about the resilience within Iran itself?

It's under this continuing barrage right across the country.

What is the degree to which the support for the leadership in their ongoing response against the incoming.

Well, it seems that the Iranians under such attack, which is illegal, which is.

Was unnecessary, which was the war of choice, are rallying around the flag because they have a very, very bitter experience of what happened in the Middle east in the past two decades or so.

They've seen what happened to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Syria.

So they are deeply concerned about Syrianization of Iran.

This is particularly since we hear the same actual rhetoric from Washington and Tel Aviv to, to fragment, to separate Iran into different pieces, to, to, to undermine and to destroy that the whole entire infrastructure in Iran.

And also by targeting civilian and sometimes historical sites such as schools have been targeted, hospitals, museums and historical sites.

And that is deeply concerning Iranians and their sense of nationalism, of course.

What is your sense of this latest ultimatum from Donald Trump alum giving, you know, 48 hours for the straight of Hormuz to be opened to everybody or he'll start attacking power plants within the country?

We hear from President Trump himself, not to mention Tel Aviv.

At the same time, it's, he said that the war is finishing soon and it doesn't, it said that we will the regime change, the regime collapses soon.

They said they should kind of surrender completely.

We see that still they have their missile capabilities.

However, is just this way of thinking relying entirely on military force is, is something that, that President Trump should change.

And that means the issues in the Middle east are much more complicated.

We gender, ideological, social, societal, economic and political, geopolitical, geo economic, kind of factors of such wars.

And these issues cannot be resolved within 48 hours.

And he, he just boxing himself, he pushes himself into the corner and tries to deal with these crises, with creating or adding more crisis.

Okay, Ari, from your point of view, what's your sense of what Trump is doing here and what it could mean for the conflict as a whole if he goes ahead with it and then Iran response in the way that it says it will and attack infrastructure across the Gulf Again, just anecdotally, the sirens are operating now.

You know, he's not necessarily going to go through with what he's saying.

But also, I think that Trump has absolutely no vision for this war other than pummeling Iran.

I don't even think he's talking about the fragmentation of Iran or the Balkanization of Iran.

I think that with him, things are very simple.

He wants to pummel Iran into a complete surrender.

That said, I don't think he's quite cognizant or that he is taking on what that would mean not just in the long term or for world energy prices, but

what it would mean for the American military.

Disastrous ground incursion even into Hodge island or into Iran proper will, I have no doubt.

And catastrophically for the American military, Iran is being quite consistent, quite durable, despite the really intense attack it's been undergoing for the past three weeks.

And there's no reason to assume that the Iranians won't do exactly as they say they're going to do which has been characteristic of Iranian behavior since the begin.

Ori Goldberg there in Tel Aviv and Alan Salah here in the studio.