Day 645 - Micah Goodman: Israel may soon remake the region
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with author and public intellectual Micah Goodman.
Just ahead of this week's What Matters Now recording, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump sat in the White House for a celebratory meal.
The table was set for a grand announcement -- a sealed hostage release-ceasefire deal -- but the guest of honor and his terrorist counterparts have yet to come to terms.
Goodman looks back at the two huge "double gambles" made during these 21 months of war. The first was by former Hamas leader Yahye Sinwar, who launched the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, after viewing the intense divisiveness in Israeli society. His double-or-nothing bet was that Iran and its proxies would immediately join in the onslaught -- they didn't.
Goodman compares Sinwar's double gamble to that of Netanyahu, who launched a surprise preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear program on June 13 and wagered that the United States would join.
Now that Netanyahu's bet has paid off, Goodman describes how the region is ripe for a realignment -- if tough compromises can be made to end the Gaza war.
And so this week, we ask Micah Goodman, what matters now.
What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves and video edited by Thomas Girsch.
IMAGE: Shiite Muslim mourners hold portraits of Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a religious procession held to mark Ashura, on the 10th day of the Islamic holy month of Muharram in Karachi on July 6, 2025. (Asif HASSAN / AFP)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now, a weekly podcast diving into one issue affecting Israel and the Jewish world. |
| 0:09.9 | I'm your host, Deputy Editor Amanda Borschaldan, here with a very special guest, public intellectual and author, Mika Goodman. |
| 0:17.9 | Mika, thank you so much for joining me today. |
| 0:19.7 | Hi, Amanda. I'm so happy to be here with you today. |
| 0:21.7 | It is always such a pleasure to speak with you. |
| 0:23.9 | And even though we're neighbors and, may I say it, friends, it's so rarely happens that we |
| 0:28.4 | get to sit across the table from each other. |
| 0:30.2 | So again, thank you so much for taking the time. |
| 0:32.7 | Let's dive in. |
| 0:33.6 | All right. So the table, if we want to refer to the table, the table was set last night. We're recording on Tuesday. The table was set last night and all the characters were lined up. We had U.S. President Donald Trump. We had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing each other. And the table was set for an announcement that didn't come, an announcement for a potential |
| 0:55.2 | ceasefire slash hostage release deal. It's quite possible that it may work out this week. There's a |
| 1:01.3 | lot of optimism flirting through the air, but that did not happen. And so we're here 21 months |
| 1:07.8 | into the war that began on October 7th when Hamas invaded southern Israel, murdering |
| 1:13.3 | 1,200 and taking 251 people back to Gaza as hostages. There are now some 50 hostages in |
| 1:22.7 | Gaza, 20 of whom we consider probably alive, and this is the situation as we face it today. |
| 1:29.4 | I just want to add one more wrinkle. We are also after the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. |
| 1:36.4 | So you and I have spoken through these 21 months, and at one point, you were very adamant, very passionate about the idea that Israel needs to affect change |
| 1:49.5 | in Iran, either regime change or flat-out attack it. So I want to start with that, if you |
| 1:56.4 | don't mind. I want to start talking about that war that just happened. |
| 2:00.5 | So this war that just happened. |
| 2:06.3 | So this war that just happened did something that transformed Israel's strategic situation. |
| 2:11.4 | After October 7th and October 8th, Israel seemed very weak, very vulnerable. |
... |
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