Leading Middle East foreign policy experts warned that Iran’s decision to expand its response to the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign by striking neighboring Arab states could prove to be a major strategic miscalculation — one that risks isolating Tehran further and potentially drawing Gulf countries to take action.

In the days following the launch of the campaign, Iran carried out widespread drone and missile strikes at multiple Arab nations, striking all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — as well as Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Oman.

Some Iranian strikes hit U.S. military installations in those countries, as well as the U.S. consulate in Dubai and the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, in what analysts said was an apparent attempt to raise the costs for Washington and lead allies to pressure it to halt the campaign.

But Iran also indiscriminately struck civilian targets — including airports, hotels and major oil and gas infrastructure — causing damage that is sending oil prices soaring and could have lasting economic consequences for the region. Prior to the attacks, several of the affected Arab governments had publicly stated they would not allow their territory to be used to launch strikes on Iran.

On Sunday, the U.S. issued a joint statement along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, strongly condemning Iran’s “indiscriminate and reckless missile and drone attacks against sovereign territories across the region.”

The attacks have only continued and expanded since then: On Wednesday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said that Iran had launched a ballistic missile towards its airspace that was intercepted by NATO defense systems. NATO spokeswoman Allison Hart condemned the incident, adding that NATO “stands firmly with all allies.” 

While Arab officials have sought to distance their countries from the conflict and have largely remained silent as they weigh their options, experts said Iranian attacks are a significant error from Tehran that risks pushing Arab states toward direct involvement.

Alexander Gray, a former National Security Council chief of staff under President Donald Trump and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Jewish Insider that Iran’s decision to attack Arab countries was an “extraordinary strategic miscalculation.”

“Not only has Iran forced the region’s Arab states to openly support the U.S. and Israeli operation, but it has encircled itself far more effectively than any American diplomacy could have accomplished,” Gray said. “Over the long term, this unifying force may offer the U.S. a unique opportunity to return to the economic and diplomatic track of the Abraham Accords on a broader, regional basis after the conclusion of the military operation.” 

Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum, echoed those sentiments, calling the action a “risky move at best.”

“Iran’s decision to attack neighboring Arab states was intended to impose escalating costs that would theoretically put pressure on the U.S. to bring the war to a halt,” Koplow said. “So far it has backfired as the U.S. and Israel show no signs of backing down, while there are reports that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are contemplating taking their own action against Iranian missiles and launchers.”

He added that the latest missile fired toward Turkey is “a sign of Iranian regime desperation,” and follows a similar pattern. Koplow also noted that Gulf states are likely to have a “much lower tolerance threshold for Iranian attacks and provocations” going forward, warning that the result could be “an even more isolated Iran facing a regional coalition that takes a more aggressive posture toward its own defense.”

Hussein Mansour, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, also said that Iran “catastrophically” miscalculated. “Iran created the conditions for the Gulf states to join the operation,” said Mansour. He added that Tehran’s decision to strike Arab neighbors destroyed “every diplomatic off-ramp it [Iranian leadership] had spent years cultivating.”

Dana Stroul, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said “there is no question that Iran’s strategy of punishing U.S. allies and partners backfired.” 

“Gulf leaders are also making clear they maintain the right to defend themselves and are likely considering the proposition that, given Iran’s willingness to unleash its missile and drone arsenal, the best defense is a strong offense,” Stroul said. “It should not be a surprise if in the coming hours or days we see an expanded role for Gulf countries under attack.”

Amb. Dan Shapiro, a former official in both the Obama and Biden administrations, also told JI that the recent Iranian attacks increases the potential for Arab partners to get involved, noting that the situation underscores the value for Arab countries in “being part of a regional air defense network that includes the United States, but also includes Israel.”

“The Gulf states mostly wanted to stay out of this conflict,” Shapiro said. Now, ”there’s at least some possibility you see the UAE and possibly other Gulf states participate in some measure in operations against Iran.”

Mansour said the strikes have pushed the Gulf states further away from Iran and towards the West. 

“Last June, during the 12-day war, Qatar called Iran ‘the sisterly Islamic Republic,’ Kuwait accused the U.S. of violating international law, and Saudi Arabia called for ‘restraint,’” said Mansour. “Nine months later, Qatar is shooting down Iranian jets. Saudi Arabia has authorized retaliation and offered to place ‘all its capabilities’ at the region’s disposal. The UAE has shuttered its embassy in Tehran.”

Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Trump administration official, told JI that he views Iran’s decision to attack Arab neighbors as more of a “reality of who the regime is” rather than a miscalculation. 

“The regime is fighting for its survival, it sees all of these countries hosting U.S. bases or otherwise aligning with the U.S. in strategic ways. It knows one of their only cards to play is both to drain air defense assets and spike energy prices, so it wildly attacks civilian and critical infrastructure across the region,” said Goldberg. “The regime sees most of these countries as complicit in the attack simply by enabling the U.S. to operate in the Middle East, and it knows that if it can hit enough energy targets hard enough it can increase the pain point for the West.”

Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said that while Arab Gulf states are “furious with Iran,” there are reasons for them to refrain from entering direct conflict. 

“I suspect that [Arab states] not becoming a party to the war will be essential to negotiating workarounds with the Iranians,” said Diwan. “These will be necessary to get the breathing space in shipping and transport necessary to endure a long war.”

“This same logic will apply if Iran emerges from the war depleted but still dangerous,” Diwan added. “While America may depart the region, Iran will remain, and its Arab neighbors must find a way to live with it.”

Goldberg said that while there is “political benefit” for the U.S. in having Arab governments “endorse offensive military action against the regime,” he noted that “absent a major offensive military contribution to the war [from Arab states], the regime inflicts more costs on the region than it endures for doing so.” 

“The GCC states are now on an escalation ladder they did not choose and cannot easily descend,” said Mansour. “If Iran continues to target energy infrastructure, I imagine the Gulf will retaliate severely. The bigger question is what happens after the war stops, and this will largely depend on how the war stops.”

The run-up to next year’s Israeli election will be the first in which artificial intelligence tools to create images and videos and rapidly compose texts are easily accessible, and experts are raising red flags over the technology’s ability to influence voters and campaigns and the lack of regulations around its use. 

Israeli politicians have long been early adopters of technological tools to boost their campaigns, from bypassing traditional media through Facebook to using social media data to target key demographics before most liberal democracies were doing so, and AI will likely be no different.

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Democracy in the Digital Age program at the Israel Democracy Institute, told Jewish Insider that Israel is one of the countries with the largest market penetration of AI in the world — 85% of Israelis have used ChatGPT and 76% use it frequently, according to a study by the Israeli Internet Association published in October  — so it is only a matter of time before politicians use it in their campaigns.

(National elections are legally required to take place on Oct. 26, 2026, at the latest, but political tensions make an earlier date possible.)

“AI chatbots have significant penetration in the public,” Shwartz Altshuler said. “They will be used to ask whether to vote and for whom to vote. We have not seen anything like this before. … People use chatbots as a companion for emotional support. The concern over the great influence of chatbots on voter behavior is significant.”

Shwartz Altshuler said that there have already been attempts to “give poison injections” to AI models, such as creating fake news sites and positions on subreddits to manipulate the bots into giving more pro-Israel responses to users abroad, and those tools can be turned inward, toward Israeli voters.

She also pointed out that Israel does not have any laws requiring machine-generated content to be labeled.

“This is the first time we have an election in which we are unable to differentiate between authentic and machine-generated photos and videos,” she said. “There is a fear that the perception of reality is being undermined. People can forge documents and make deepfakes of politicians. … Machine-generated content can create an alternative reality, a very dangerous prospect when the content is very emotionally attractive.”

Yuval Dror, the former dean of media studies in Israel’s College of Management Studies, who hosts a popular technology podcast in Hebrew, was skeptical that computer-generated photos and videos will have a major impact on the next election.

“With photos, sometimes we can tell if it’s AI or not. With video, people usually know that it’s AI,” he told JI. “The impact of [AI-generated] video will mostly be economic, because it will be much easier to produce. In the past, you needed an ad agency, actors, post-production work. Now it’s much easier, so [campaigns will] save money.”

“You can create a false presentation in which masses of people say this or that and look like a grassroots movement,” Yuval Dror, the former dean of media studies in Israel’s College of Management Studies, said. “There is [already] an army of bots echoing a few people on social media.”

Dror was more concerned about AI-generated texts, which he noted can be much harder to detect. 

AI may be used in upcoming political campaigns to flood social networks with content, making a candidate, message or policy appear to have more support than it does in reality. This already happens on X, where much of the political discourse in Israel takes place, but also in more closed networks like WhatsApp and Telegram, Dror said.

“You can create a false presentation in which masses of people say this or that and look like a grassroots movement,” Dror said. “There is [already] an army of bots echoing a few people on social media.”

“We’ve seen this for years. It will just get more and more convincing,” he added.

Shwartz Altshuler said that social media companies have difficulty stemming mass-bot content. “Generative AI can create a lot of versions of the same content, so the result is inauthentic, coordinated behavior on social media,” she said. “If there are slightly different versions of the same content, the social networks don’t detect” that it comes from bots.

“Most of these [AI tools] are not mentioned in the law or by past Central Election Committee decisions. They are in a grey area. [Campaigns] will do what they want,” Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Democracy in the Digital Age program at the Israel Democracy Institute, predicted. 

In addition, developments in AI since the last Israeli election, in 2022, can help politicians use data even more effectively to target potential voters with different kinds of messages and ads, she said.

Shwartz Altshuler recounted speaking with a prominent Israeli political strategist who told her, “First we win elections, and then we see if what we did is legal or not.” 

“Most of these [AI tools] are not mentioned in the law or by past Central Election Committee decisions. They are in a grey area. [Campaigns] will do what they want,” she predicted. 

Despite the fertile ground for election fraud using AI, Shwartz Altshuler said it is unlikely that new laws will be passed before the next election. “This coalition has no motivation to pass such laws [and] usually the courts say laws [regarding elections] can only be applied after the next election.”

She also pointed out that the current Central Election Committee chairman, Noam Solberg, is a conservative Supreme Court justice, and therefore would be unlikely to instruct the Knesset to pass laws addressing the issue.

Despite all the advances in AI, it may not be enough to cover for a weak candidate. 

Dror said that Israeli politicians are already using AI to write texts for social media or speeches: “Some politicians are not capable of stringing together two sentences, so they let AI do it, but the result is no less awkward.” 

They have also generated all kinds of pictures to post online, which Dror said “makes [them] look stupid,” using Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, who posted a picture earlier this year depicting French President Emmanuel Macron kissing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as an example. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz frequently posted AI-generated images ridiculing Israel’s enemies when he was foreign minister last year. 

“I don’t know that there’s an audience for this stupidity,” Dror said.

Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion on Tuesday that the U.S. would welcome Turkish troops playing a role in the proposed stabilization force in Gaza was met with skepticism from leading Republican lawmakers and experts in Washington. 

Vance told reporters in Israel that while the U.S. would not “force” Israel to accept Turkish troops “on their soil,” the Trump administration believed “that there’s a constructive role for the Turks to play.” 

Asked about the prospect of Ankara’s involvement in President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the region while appearing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day, the vice president replied that the U.S. does not view Israel as a “vassal state” or a “client state” but as a “partner.”

“The president believes very strongly that … Israel, honestly with our Gulf Arab allies, can play a very positive leadership role in this region to where, frankly, the United States can care less about the Middle East because our allies in the region are stepping up and taking control and taking ownership of their area of the world,” Vance said.

The vice president made the comments in response to Netanyahu suggesting that he took issue with the notion of Turkey playing a role in the future of Gaza. “We will decide together about that. So I have very strong opinions on that. Want to guess what they are?” the prime minister quipped. 

Vance’s embrace of the Turkish troop proposal prompted leading Republicans in Washington to voice their concerns about allowing the country to install forces inside Gaza as part of the proposed International Stabilization Force, citing Israel’s opposition to the idea, Turkey’s openly hostile posture toward the Jewish state and Ankara’s ties to Hamas. 

“I found it interesting that the opposition leader, Mr. [Yair] Lapid, who I know and like, was adamant that Turkey and Qatar have very limited roles in Gaza because of the relationship with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Jewish Insider. 

“I appreciate Turkey and Qatar as allies, but when it comes to Israel, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s been terrible in terms of rhetoric. I appreciate the role they played in trying to get the ceasefire, but the appetite in Israel for Turkey and Qatar to have a major role is pretty limited, given the history,” he continued. 

Graham said that he was “hoping we can find a stabilizing force. People keep mentioning Egypt. Maybe that works, but I don’t buy into the idea Hamas will ever change their stripes. They have to be dealt out of Palestinian society.”

“It’s very important for Israel to have a stabilizing force that they trust that understands the danger Hamas presents,” the South Carolina senator argued.

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow for American strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, expressed similar doubts. 

“There’s a million reasons why it won’t be viable to have a long term Israeli military presence on the ground in Gaza. But the same goes for Arab partners,” Ruhe told JI. “Having Turkish forces in there particularly strikes me as a bad idea. Turkey is not an impartial force. They are a capable and experienced military, but mostly doing things the United States and Israel don’t want them to be doing.” 

“Turkey does not deserve anything like the benefit of the doubt. Their intentions are certainly suspect given their close ties to Hamas. Having a Turkish military presence literally on [Israel’s] front doorstep in Gaza could actually be worse,” Ruhe continued. “I wouldn’t see them doing anything concrete and substantive to prevent Hamas from basically reestablishing itself as the main actor on the ground in Gaza.”

Beyond a potential incapability to root out Hamas, Ruhe suggested that enabling Turkish troop presence in Gaza could be counterintuitive to U.S. interests in other ways. 

“Hamas might actually find it in their interest to try and stoke tensions between Turkey and Israel. That would be a massive headache for the U.S., having, technically, a NATO ally at daggers drawn with our closest partner in the Middle East,” Ruhe said.  

One senior GOP senator offered a blunt assessment while speaking on condition of anonymity about Vance’s comments. “They’re pushing Israel into a terrible situation. Turkey and Qatar are the benefactors of Hamas. It’s like putting a fox in the henhouse,” the senator said.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) did not disagree with Vance’s suggestion that Turkey had a role to play in the broader peace plan, but questioned the likelihood that Israel would accept such a proposal.

“Would Israel accept Turkish forces? That, I think, is the key. I think that’s the most important part of this,” Rounds told JI. “I do think our ally, our NATO ally, Turkey, could play a very constructive role in the Middle East in terms of keeping the peace, but that’s not an easy thing to do because Turkey and Israel have had strained relations.”

National security experts are warning that Jewish communities around the world could face increased Iranian threats following the recent accusation by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps orchestrated attacks last year on a synagogue and kosher restaurant in the country.

“We’ve seen Iranian penetration in many Westernized countries, with Australia now being the latest. Though to see direct evidence of a linkage to actual violence — not just disinformation campaigns or cyber campaigns — is very frightening,” Rich Goldberg, a senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider. 

On Tuesday, Albanese announced the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador in Canberra — the first time Australia has expelled a foreign ambassador since World War II — as well as three other embassy staffers, and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group, after Australian intelligence indicated that Tehran was behind the 2024 attacks. 

Goldberg called it “earth-shattering” that Australia’s “left-wing prime minister, who may not agree on a whole lot of politics with the U.S., has been woken up to the very sobering reality of Iranian threats in his own country.” 

Goldberg urged Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union to “follow swiftly” in severing diplomatic relations with Iran, and for the U.S. and Australia to put diplomatic pressure on other governments to designate IRGC as a terrorist organization. Nearly all the major EU countries still have full diplomatic ties with Iran. 

“We know that Canada is highly penetrated by Iranian assets and the IRGC inside the country without having a very clear designation as a terrorist organization,” said Goldberg. “We’ve seen terrorist plots that are Iranian sponsored on British soil and the British government is still dragging its feet on prescribing the IRGC as a terrorist group. We know that they have operatives, both undercover as diplomats and as operatives, throughout the EU.” 

More than a year ago, the Biden administration’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, warned of the Iranian regime’s efforts to take advantage of campus unrest. In light of Australia going public with the Iranian threat, Goldberg urged the Trump administration to order an updated review of Iranian influence efforts in the U.S. 

“We all sort of forgot about that report, but it was big news at the time [even though] we never got a lot of detail on that,” he said. “Nobody has asked the question of what’s the current status of Iranian influence on protest movements or acts of violence in the U.S. We suspect that Iran has agents in the U.S. Some of those people have been arrested in the past. This has to remain a key priority for the FBI and [Department of] Homeland Security.”  

Matt Levitt, director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called for increased awareness of “Iranian external operations around the world, including in the U.S., in which the IRGC and other Iranian government agencies increasingly pay criminal proxies to carry out acts of violence, intimidation, and even kidnapping and murder on their behalf,” he said in a statement to JI. 

Heads of security organizations that monitor American Jewish communal safety said that the latest news coming out of Australia — in addition to an already heightened fear of Iranian retaliation following the U.S. airstrikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities in June — make threats from Iran and its proxy groups particularly alarming. 

“The FBI and NYPD have had live investigations that have resulted in arrests of Hezbollah operatives in New York City casing out institutions,” Mitch Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, which works to safeguard Jewish communities, told JI. “Iranians have a long timeline. Just because [an attack] hasn’t happened in the last six to eight weeks [since the airstrikes] doesn’t mean that the Iranians haven’t stopped plotting.” 

Silber pointed to the recent case of a Hezbollah operative in Texas purchasing 300 pounds of ammonium nitrate. “Why would you [purchase] an explosive if you weren’t thinking of potentially trying to use it somewhere in the U.S.?” he said. 

“These developments in Australia reflect yet another tentacle of the IRGC in its escalating influence campaigns: furthering violence, destruction and discord, with the Jewish community bearing the brunt,” Michael Masters, Secure Community Network director and CEO, told JI. 

“We applaud the Australian government for shining the disinfecting light of day regarding these attacks. It only underscores the continued need for reporting, coordination and proactive security efforts by and for the Jewish community.”

Iran is unlikely to initiate attacks against the U.S. after the American strike on Islamic Republic nuclear sites, but it will continue to launch missiles at Israel, experts told Jewish Insider on Sunday.

Hours after the U.S. bombed nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran, Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JI that he doesn’t “identify a great desire — to say the least — of the Iranians to escalate with the U.S. … If they have a sharp reaction, it could drag in the Americans, who said that the matter is finished for them after they strike Iran. The U.S. has capabilities that could threaten the survival of the regime.”

Zimmt said it was likely that the Iranians would have a “symbolic reaction,” possibly targeting a U.S. military base in the region but with advance warning, similar to their response to the killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

“We shouldn’t underestimate Iran’s capabilities — their missiles are a big concern — but those who think we’re on the verge of World War III and that all the American bases will burn need to understand that the central goal of the Iranian regime is to survive, so I don’t think they’ll do that in the foreseeable future,” Zimmt added.

However, he said, hours after Iran shot 25 missiles at Israel on Sunday morning, causing damage in central Israel and Haifa, “Israel is another story. I think [Iran will] continue what they’re doing in Israel.” 

Oded Ailam, a former senior official in Israel’s defense establishment and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JI that Iran may choose not to escalate with the U.S. and instead “take out their anger on Israel with an increase in ballistic missiles,” but he said an Iranian attack on U.S. military targets in the region was still possible.

“The Iranians probably have not decided yet. It can go either way,” he said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that “we were in negotiations with the U.S. when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3/EU when the U.S. decided to blow up that diplomacy. What conclusion would you draw?” 

Ailam said that while, in the short term, Iran was unlikely to return to the negotiating table “as a matter of national pride, it would look like a total defeat,” they would probably reenter talks farther down the line.

“I don’t know when it will happen, but I think the Iranians will very cautiously try to reach out to the Americans to negotiate and say they want to try to salvage some uranium enrichment for civilian needs,” he said.

Zimmt, however, said it was “clear that they won’t go back to negotiations.” 

“The more significant thing in the weeks and days ahead is what they do in the nuclear arena,” he said. “Do they announce that they’re quitting the [Non-Proliferation Treaty]? In the end, I think their decision is connected to the question to which we don’t have an answer: what capabilities they still have.”

The lesson that Iran likely learned from the past week and a half, Zimmt posited, is that “being on the verge of having a nuclear weapon is not enough. They need to have a nuclear weapon. I’m not sure they can do it, though.”

“If, theoretically, they can use a few hundred centrifuges that remain and a few hundred kilos of uranium and try to break out [to weapons-grade enrichment] in a hidden place, they may consider it. I doubt they’ll do it now, when Israeli planes are flying over their heads, but I assume they would wait some time and reconsider their nuclear strategy,” Zimmt explained.

Initial satellite photos published by the Associated Press showed damage to the entrances of the nuclear facility in Fordow, which is under a mountain, as well as damage to the mountain itself. David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote on X that the photos appear to show that the bombs were dropped on a ventilation shaft into Fordow’s underground halls. 

Ailam said that “the damage is very extensive.” According to his analysis, the attacks “neutralized” Iran’s ability to use its 400-kg stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity and turn it into weapons-grade (90% enriched) uranium. 

“They don’t have the capability because they don’t have the centrifuges anymore,” he said. “It’s not terminal; if we want to ensure the nuclear weapons program is totally destroyed, we need to strike the 400 kg or reach an agreement in which it is removed from Iran, but this has significantly damaged the Iranians’ ability to rapidly reach military-grade enrichment.”

U.S. intelligence agencies said that the stockpile, held at the Isfahan facility, was harmed, but Israel has not yet released a similar assessment, Ailam said.

However, Zimmt said that it is harder to know the extent of the damage to the nuclear program without more extensive satellite photos of the nuclear sites.

“The Iranians are trying to present a picture that it was not significantly damaged, but there really is not much to rely on yet other than IDF reports,” he said.

IDF Spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Sunday that the Israeli army “has more targets. We are prepared for the campaign to continue and must prepare for any developments.”

Ailam said that Israel “did not entirely meet [its] goals. It was mostly Israel, but with the help of the U.S., we partially removed the immediate threat from the nuclear program and the massive ballistic system and [Iran’s] ability to manufacture 300 ballistic missiles a day. That was an existential threat to Israel.” 

“But we are not at the point where we can say we removed all the threats and finished the whole bank of targets. It’s a huge country,” he added.

Zimmt said that the U.S. strike on Fordow was “the cherry on top” of Israel’s war against Iran, and that it’s time to wind down.

“Of course we can continue. We can always try to further degrade the nuclear program, but … as long as the goal was, foremost, to severely damage the nuclear program, the goal was — if not already achieved — it’s very close … I think the time has come to think of how to end this, even if it’s unilateral. If they attack, we can react, but we need to aim to finish in the coming days,” Zimmt said.

As for talk about regime change, Zimmt said it would be “impossible” through airstrikes. 

Ailam said that every major attack on Iran creates “cracks in the regime’s wall and stability, and reveals this regime to be an empty vessel.” However, he said that there are not powerful enough forces within Iran that have risen up against the regime yet. “When it will happen is hard to say, but the more [the regime] suffers blows, the closer it gets.”

The U.S.’ moves to evacuate some State Department personnel and military families from the Middle East are seen by experts as a potential sign of a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program — or, at least, a signal to Iran that the U.S. is prepared for such action, ahead of a planned round of nuclear talks with Tehran. 

The moves come as President Donald Trump’s self-imposed deadline for the talks is approaching this week, and Trump has expressed public frustration with the lack of progress being made. There have been conflicting reports about whether the talks expected this weekend are still slated to occur.

The State Department is drawing down personnel in Iraq, the department said, and the Pentagon is allowing for voluntary departures of military families from locations in the Middle East. The United Kingdom, separately, issued a maritime trade warning about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the Middle East.

Dana Stroul, the research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, noted that the Trump administration had conducted mandatory drawdowns of State Department personnel in Iraq at the end of the first Trump administration. The Pentagon evacuations, she noted, are thus far optional.

“This was part of the Iran policy approach [during Trump’s first administration] to increase pressure on the Iraqi government to get attack[s] against U.S. forces to stop,” Stroul told Jewish Insider. “So some of the people making these decisions inside the Trump administration have prior experience with reducing our presence in the region as part of a pressure play against Iran.”

But, she added, a “reduction in military families in the Gulf is the first step military planners would want to take if they were trying to reduce risk to U.S. personnel before large-scale, significant military operations.”

“If you’re trying to minimize risk before significant military operations, this is what you do. But right now they’re voluntary, not ordered,” Stroul continued.

Stroul argued that, in combination with the recent call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump’s public comments that he’s been frustrated by Iran’s posture in negotiations, “Tehran should take notice.”

Daniel Shapiro, Stroul’s successor in the deputy assistant secretary role, said that the administration “is clearly into some major preparations for possible military action vs Iran (by US and/or Israel).”

“A useful signal ahead of round 6 of nuke talks,” Shapiro continued. “Need to be prepared to back it up.”

Jason Brodsky, the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, framed the move as a likely sign of action, noting that congressional testimony by Gen. Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, set for Thursday morning, had been postponed.

“Something is cooking,” Brodsky said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, told JI he believes that the moves are primarily an “unambiguous signal to the Iranians in advance of the next round of talks that U.S. patience is not unlimited and that time may be running out for them.”

He said the steps will take time to carry out but “they all have the indicia of the classic playbook that the United States would start rolling out in advance of anticipated hostilities. And of course it’s all being undertaken without much stealth and secrecy, but rather in a manner that ensures the Iranians and the rest of the world will know about it.”

He added that it “doesn’t necessarily have to be just one or the other,” and the moves should leave Iran guessing.

“The fact that the immediate purpose of these moves might primarily be a signaling mechanism to influence Iran’s posture in the negotiations doesn’t ipso facto mean it’s all just a bluff — although, if we’re honest, bluffing and then retreating is clearly often an integral part of President Trump’s negotiating MO and the ‘art of the deal,’” Hannah said. “That said, it could also be a deadly serious first step to put Iran on notice that it’s got one last chance to take the deal on offer or face the wrath of a U.S. military strike.” 

“Trump is perfectly capable of going either way and the Iranians shouldn’t sleep too comfortably trying to figure out which one of those possibilities  they’re facing,” he continued. “If they guess wrong, the outcome for them is potentially catastrophic.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, framed the moves more as a negotiating tactic.

“Ahead of round 6, the U.S. is signaling: failure at the table means real consequences,” Dubowitz said on X. “Starting to move non-essential personnel and families —reversible but not trivial. Message to Khamenei: you can end this peacefully, or face serious preparedness if you don’t.”

Kurilla said in response to a question from lawmakers on Tuesday about retaliation from a potential Israeli strike on Iran that the U.S. is continually assessing threats to military personnel in the Middle East and taking steps to address potential vulnerabilities.