And finally… the author copies have arrived! It’s a great feeling to hold the finished book after such a long process. The Axis of Resistance: Iran, Israel and the Struggle for the Middle East UK & EU: May 8 | US & North America: July 14 @politybooks

Raz Zimmt, the head of the Iran program at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), warns political divisions between the two options are not deep enough to speak of a "fundamental change in Tel Aviv's approach toward Tehran" after the election. "In the perception of Israel's left, right, and center factions regarding the Iranian threat, especially its nuclear threat, there are minor differences," Zimmt told DW. Moreover, according to Zimmt, any military escalation against Iran depends "on the decision of the US president" far more than on the identity of Israel's prime minister. "Overall, I do not expect Israel's policy toward Iran and its proxies to undergo dramatic changes, regardless of the future government's composition," he said.

My latest for @TIME: The dominant perspective in Tehran is that the next war must be fought in a way that makes it so costly that a future U.S. president would not contemplate another. time.com/article/2026/10/27/…

“Tehran remains unlikely to let Washington end the conflict quickly and, fearing a potential attack from the U.S., could itself strike first,” writes Hamidreza Azizi. time-magazine.visitlink.me/n…

NEW OP-ED | How the War in Iran Could Escalate @HamidRezaAz explains how the risk of a renewed regional war is growing in @TIME, and why diplomacy remains the only way to prevent a conflagration. time.com/article/2026/10/27/…

Very interesting - and concerning - analysis

Agree!

Notewrothy from @HamidRezaAz -

Mojtaba Khamenei has met with the speaker of the parliament, chief justice and national security advisor in the past few days. A bizarre time to increase the tempo of his high-level meetings as the U.S./Israel prepare for another round of leadership targeting…

The meeting in Tehran was a big PR win for Iran. Major regional powers went to Tehran to ask for help on Yemen. And Iran likely laid out it terms for that help. It could yield results. Inviting Iran to join Mecca Alliance as some had anticipated did not happen. In fact Iran is calling the meeting the Tehran Summit. It sounds like Iran is envisioning a different regional arrangement one that Iran wants to define and play a central role in. And per Rezaie’s comments after the meeting Iran’s vision which is clearly aimed at keeping US out if the region does not easily square with the relations of the three Mecca Alliance partners with US.

Told @washingtonpost: The Mecca pact’s visit comes against a deafening drumbeat of war. The danger is that both sides are increasingly preparing for a war neither can win, neither can easily contain and neither knows how to end. washingtonpost.com/world/202…

NEW: The Pakistani, Saudi and Turkish guests hosted in Tehran yesterday asked Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, about the status of talks with Washington. Rezaee is said to have told them Iran could shorten the implementation timeline of its seven-condition proposal to the Trump administration. If “the only issue is the number of days,” Rezaee's deputy at the SNSC, Ali Baqeri-Kani quoted him as saying, Iran could accept five or even four days instead of seven. Yet the core obstacle is not speed or even substance, but sequencing. To break the deadlock, senior political sources in Tehran told @amwajmedia, Iran last month proposed through Qatar a seven-day plan to end the war, under which Hormuz would reopen on Day 6 and final-deal talks would resume on Day 7. Squeezing that timeline to four or five days does not change the dispute over sequencing. The Islamabad MOU agreed between Iran and the United States in June is a two-stage accord. Under its Paragraph 13, talks on a final deal, including on Iran's nuclear program, can begin only once five measures are being implemented, and they must continue while talks run. The Trump administration now seems to want core elements of the endgame up front. If that includes Iran's uranium stockpile, Tehran would be trading irreversible steps for easily reversible ones. In such a scenario, the Islamic Republic may calculate that peace today could ensure a much more costly war tomorrow. Trump has said he is weighing a deal with Iran against military action to “finish them off.” It is an open question whether the president has any real interest in a mutually acceptable formula. After all, Trump may already have been persuaded that a deal will not deliver what one final blow against the Islamic Republic just might. If that is the case, Tehran may not be caught off guard this time.

Apart from the substance of the discussions, what was interesting about the meeting was that it was hosted by Mohsen Rezaei rather than Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. This is also a sign of changing internal dynamics within the Iranian political system, in which Ghalibaf no longer seems to play the central role he played during the war and shortly afterward, especially in the negotiations that led to the Islamabad MoU. Now, everything appears to be channeled through the SNSC and its secretary, Mohsen Rezaei. This does not mean that Ghalibaf is no longer influential, but his relative position within the system seems to have weakened in favor of more confrontational figures such as Rezaei, Vahidi, and others.

I was quoted in this @CNN report by @MostafaSalemCNN on today's high-level security meeting in Terhan: Tehran wants credible guarantees that any agreement would prevent another military attack, and it is difficult to see how Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Pakistan could provide such guarantees or exert sufficient influence over Trump to secure them. Unless these countries bring something new to the table that could change the calculations in either Tehran or Washington, the meeting is unlikely to produce a substantive breakthrough. For now, it looks more like a last-minute attempt to prevent the resumption of war than the beginning of a new diplomatic process. edition.cnn.com/2026/10/26/m…

Told @RFERL that today's high-level security meeting in Tehran is essentially a continuation of diplomatic efforts already under way, and the timing suggests that regional countries are increasingly concerned that these efforts may be running out of time. rferl.org/a/tensions-mecca-a…

NEW: Iranian officials expect renewed war and are debating options for how to respond. But amid the discussions, recent incidents in both Iran and Iraq indicate that the initial blows of a third all-out war with Israel since June 2025 have already begun.

The hardliner Paydari Front - close to Saeed Jalili has asked the government to withdraw from the NPT and “reconsider the defense and military doctrine.”

My podcast interview with DecodingGeopolitics on the next phase of the war piped.video/zCOSKDLTGoI?is=INgf…