Keeping the War in Focus: The Strategic Ripples of the Iran Conflict, with David Wurmser

The war with Iran is closing multiple fronts for Israel, but the strategic aftershocks — from a resurgent Sunni Islamist movement to a fracturing Jordan — may reshape the Middle East for decades, Dr. David Wurmser told a Jewish Policy Center webinar on March 5, 2026. Wurmser, a senior analyst for Middle East Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, argued that the current conflict must be understood not as an isolated campaign against Tehran but as the catalyst for a broader regional realignment. A former senior advisor to the US National Security Advisor, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State, with 11 years of intelligence experience in the US Navy Reserves, he began with Lebanon, where Hezbollah had provoked Israel by launching missiles — what he called submitting "the winning entry for this year's Darwin Awards." Hezbollah is not its own front, he argued, but an extension of the broader Iranian war, and Israel intends to see the fight through to the end. Northern Israeli towns remain largely depopulated, and every Israeli knows the war was unfinished.