This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

In much of the world, Israel's longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been known above all for his opposition to a Palestinian state.

And that's an opposition, of course, that's deepened since October 7th.

And yet, if you really drill down Netanyahu's true obsession is not so much Palestine.

His true obsession for years has been the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Ayatollahs who have ruled Iran since 1979 have promised to destroy the Jewish state. The country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali

Hamani and his theocratic regime and his security chiefs all insist that Israel is an alien presence,

that the Holocaust is a hoax, that Israel is the junior Satan and America the senior Satan. Iran has armed and funded proxies to fight Israel,

Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and militia groups in Iraq and elsewhere. And in the

meantime, Iran, we believe,

has sought to develop atomic weapons. For years, Netanyahu has called on the world to take

seriously Iran's threat to destroy Israel. And Iran seemed to maintain a position of strength,

even as its economy struggled and internal protests grew.

But after October 7th and the killing rampage by Hamas,

the power balance in the region seemed to shift.

In Gaza, Israel has devastated Hamas, as well as tens of thousands of civilians.

In Lebanon, Israel has dismantled Iran's proxy Hezbollah as a fighting force. In Syria, the Assad regime collapsed, leaving Iran without a powerful ally. Suddenly, Iran was weak. And sensing that weakness,

Israel bombed much of Iran's air defenses, leaving it vulnerable as never before. So now the war's

begun in earnest. Where it will go and how the Middle East will change is an open question.

Here in the U.S., involvement in another Middle East conflict has been hotly debated, not least among

Donald Trump's own supporters, as we saw last week. But in Israel,

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