Israel's War With Iran Is Turning the Country Into a Nation of Bomb Shelters

Michael comforts his dog, Louis, as they shelter in an underground car park that functions as a bomb shelter, as sirens sound amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 4, 2026. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun Credit: Ronen Zvulun/ REUTERS

We'll begin with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee's commendation to Israelis for their discipline and organization on the way to the bomb shelters. His remarks were stirring, but it's important to explain to him that this accomplishment is the result of years of hard work.

Every few years – every few months, lately – the government of total victory drills its citizens in entering the shelters in perfect order and without complaint. Inside the large, public shelters, tent cities are already going up; the residents sleep, study, and even cook inside the shelter.

At this rate, in the future Israelis will build bomb shelters instead of homes, with, for the sake of nostalgia, an adjacent, well-ventilated room with windows.

The entrance of the bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh that was struck on Sunday. Credit: Itai Cohen

As for the rest: Israel has placed the United States in a trap. By intervening in the war, America gave legitimacy for Iran to attack Arab states in the Persian Gulf, because they host U.S. military bases. In the past, Israel attacked and America played mediator, supplying weapons to Israel while simultaneously calling for calm. "Let me die with America," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to himself, and now America is in a deep hole.

Meanwhile, residents of the Persian Gulf's Arab states are starting to ask why they lack adequate air defenses while Israel has three layers of them. Discounting the Arab population, especially that of the Negev, Israel is the best protected country in the world. It seems that the situation of the Gulf states is no different from that of their citizens' Arab brethren in Israel: Let them hide under the staircase in their palaces.

The problem is that Israel and the United States aimed very high: the destruction not only of Iran's nuclear project and ballistic missiles, but also of the regime itself. In one fell swoop.

Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference on Iran's nuclear program in 2022. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

The Orientalism expressed by Henry Kissinger when he described Arab-Israeli negotiations as a "Middle Eastern bazaar" has returned. The then U.S. secretary of state counseled paying attention only to what the tribal chief says, because he is the one who decides.

The tribal chief in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was eliminated, and the expectation was that the regime would collapse like a house of cards.

The contempt for Arabs and for the East in general – the notion that a regime can be brought down by killing its leader – is the Achilles' heel of American policy, which by all indications is being dragged, in the wake of Israeli doctrine, into attacking various gatherings of leaders of hostile states in a bid to change the world order.

But it doesn't work that way; the graveyards are crowded with leaders who filled the entire space when they were alive and are entirely forgotten today.

The Iranian foreign minister praying at the grave of Hassan Nasrallah in June. Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP

The Iranian regime is indeed a corrupt dictatorship that terrorizes anyone with a different opinion, but it is not an autocracy; rather, it is supported by an entire stratum of society within which struggles are taking place, with many conflicts between liberals and fanatics. The attempts at intervention by foreign actors in fact boosts the fanatics while leaving the liberals tainted as collaborators.

For Donald Trump, changing a regime is easier than changing socks. The U.S. president complains that Iran's would-be alternative leaders to the Iranian regime are already dead, and also says that the next ruler might be as bad as the first. Now he wants to choose the new ruler himself. He's not a president, he's a dealer in a casino.

This war, despite all the tragedies it brings to the region, is very simple for Iranians: They can sit and do nothing, launching an occasional missile here and a drone there; the main thing is to hold out, for the regime to remain in place. For them, that is the great victory.