Posted on May 5, 2026
David Adesnik ’94 is the VP of Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank, with expertise in Iran’s global threat network and Middle East conflicts.
Why is this war different from other wars? What do you think is the key to understanding the players, the agendas, the costs, and the stakes?
This is the first time that Israel and the United States have been fighting the same war, side by side. Depending on your perspective, that may be either a very welcome or a very regrettable thing. I lean toward the former. The United States has many allies, but few who can operate at the same level militarily. Even top NATO allies struggle to keep up. And while there’s a lot we don’t know, it seems that Israel is carrying its share of the burden in terms of collecting intelligence and carrying out strikes inside Iran.
In terms of understanding the players and agenda, I’ll focus for the sake of brevity on Donald Trump and the Iranian leadership. It is a mistake to look for doctrinal consistency in Trump’s foreign policy. That is why so many anti-interventionists perceive this war as a betrayal. He led them to believe he was dead-set against new wars in the Middle East. But he has also loathed Iran for nearly 50 years – there are clips of him from the 1980s in which he bashes Iran with the same fervor as today. Regarding the Iranians, the key is to take their ideological commitments literally and seriously. It is not a pose behind which moderates are hiding.
Looking back at what you told us in July 2025 and at where things stand now – has anything genuinely surprised you?
There are two things that surprised me, although more in degree than in kind. First, I did not expect Trump to take the political risk of escalating the conflict to this level. Remember, last June he ordered the Air Force to carry out several attacks on a single night. Perhaps the next round would involve a few dozen strikes. The notion of several thousand strikes over 40 days was far beyond what I expected. His signature is low risk operations that leverage the U.S. ability to strike from afar and withdraw immediately, so it cannot be tied down. He didn’t send in ground troops, so the military is not literally tied down, but Trump put his reputation as a foreign policy leader on the line to a much greater degree than expected and he is paying the price. Gas went from about three dollars per gallon to over four. For a president who rode into office by attacking inflation, that’s a problem you can’t talk your way out of. Every driver knows the price of gas and – pardon the wordplay – can’t be gaslighted into thinking prices have stayed the same. And all this is happening as a midterm election approaches in which the president’s party already had control of the House seriously at risk.
Second, I’m genuinely surprised at the volume of anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracy theories that right-wing influencers are promoting about this war. We already knew the American right had an antisemitism problem, but the drumbeat is getting louder. If there’s good news, it’s that conservative voters don’t seem to buy into the idea that Israel dragged America into war. Perhaps they get that no one drags Trump into anything. For better or worse, he does what he wants.
What’s the atmosphere in Washington, in your blue, red, and Jewish circles?
I’ll start with the Jews. In one’s personal life, on a day-to-day basis, nothing has really changed in terms of antisemitism, although there have been some horrible incidents in other places, like Michigan. But simply hearing so much antisemitic rhetoric pour out in response to the war is scary, and it creates the sense that one doesn’t know if things will suddenly take a dramatic turn for the worse. Among Jewish conservatives, there is a particular fear that antisemitism is becoming entirely normalized among young Trump supporters or young conservatives who reject Trump because he’s too pro-Israel and not antisemitic. Meanwhile, there’s no lack of concern regarding the left, where figures like Zohran Mamdani and Hasan Piker seem to face no ceiling despite trivializing the threat from Hamas or even supporting it outright. Broadly, polling data shows that Democratic voters are much more likely to consider themselves pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel when given a choice between the two – a major reversal from a decade ago. It’s fair to ask if the next president, regardless of party, may be far less sympathetic to Israel than any predecessor in living memory.
Back in July 2025, you ended our conversation on a note of cautious hope – the Abraham Accords, the potential for Saudi normalization, the possibility that the Iranian people don’t share their government’s ideology. What are your feelings now?
On that last point, the deep resentment the Iranian people have for their oppressors has become crystal clear. Their rejection of revolutionary Islamism is so deep that they were willing to be slaughtered in a desperate bid to oust the regime. Few demonstrated any reservations that the country’s historic enemies were bombing it and killing its leaders. One of the parents at my son’s school, an Iranian-American, was caught in Iran when the war began. He had to find a way out via the land border with a neighboring country and made it home safe. And yet he was almost cheerful when he spoke to me about the war a few days ago. Now, it’s harder to say whether a replacement for the current regime would be stable, and whether it would truly be a friend to America or Israel. But the more pressing question now is whether, once the bombs stop falling, the people will risk a second attempt to take the streets and force out the regime. Given the scale of violence in January, it’s hard to imagine marchers taking those risks any time soon. But never say never. No one saw the Arab Spring coming even when it was just days or weeks away.
Regarding the Abraham Accords, Iran’s lashing out at the Arab Gulf states with missiles and drones certainly reminded those countries who poses the real threat to their security. Yet I think the fate of Gaza remains an enormous obstacle in the way of normalization. Gaza is in limbo and it’s hard to imagine normalization proceeding without greater stability there.
