January 27, 2026

After fighting for two blood-soaked years and paying a heavy price during the Swords of Iron War (the War of Revival), Israel has succeeded in achieving major military and diplomatic gains. The most significant are the restoration of Israeli deterrence by forcing the aggressor to suffer grievous losses and the major diplomatic achievement of UN Resolution 2803. This resolution grants, for the first time, legitimate status and a path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on President Donald Trump’s "Deal of the Century." The plan has a realistic chance of being implemented while upgrading the existing status quo. It does not negate the establishment of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and even allows Israel, under certain conditions, to annex up to thirty percent of the territory. Thus, Hamas, which presents itself as a national-Islamic liberation organization, has effectively led the Security Council to recognize the possibility of Israeli annexation of a significant portion of Judea and Samaria.
Iran protest (AI generated)
At the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Iran was gripped by mass public protests unprecedented in recent decades both in scale and in the level of violence. They began as a reaction to the most severe economic and environmental crisis in the country’s history, which reached its peak by January 2026, but within a few days evolved into an anti-government political movement. At the time of writing, it is still impossible to determine whether the leaders and participants of the protests will succeed in overthrowing the fundamentalist regime of radical Shiite Islamists, or whether the authorities, as in the past, will manage to suppress the burgeoning revolutionary process.

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