Middle East Changing in a Way That Is Good for Israel, the West: Israeli Editor-in-Chief

Joining us now with analysis is Vika Klein. He's editor-in-chief with the Jerusalem Post. Vika, thank you for joining us this morning. What's the situation on the ground in Israeli at this moment? Hi, good morning, Kerry. So here in Israel, the Iranian missile attacks are continuing, but in a very smaller, a lot smaller amount of attacks towards Israel. And at the same time, Israeli military, Israeli Air Force has been going back and forth since Saturday morning. The airplanes literally come back to Israel, you know, get their fuel and technicians, and they go back and to do special missions. And I think what we see in the footage now are recent footage from the IDF showing bombing, what the IDF thinks to be a bunker where, assumably, many senior IRGC officials were living or hiding. And Vika, I want to get a sense for the Israeli people at this moment. In America, it would seem, if you just flip through the TV stations, that support for this war falls, unfortunately, more around party lines. I want to get an understanding of the viewpoint of the Israeli people. Are they, you know, is there a lot of, a spectrum of ideas, or is there broad support for this operation? Even though we're a nation that doesn't agree on most things, I would say on this specific war, there's pretty much a consensus within Israeli society that this is something positive and good, because it really threatens, you know, the current Iranian regime threatens the existence of the state of Israel, and they say it all the time. It's not like someone's building some sort of a conspiracy theory. Their goal is to wipe out the only Jewish state around the world. And so, therefore, here in Israel, it's definitely something that there's a huge support. I'll say even more so that people both on the conservative and on the liberal side, you know, appreciate President Donald Trump. His ratings in Israel are a lot higher than they are in the U.S. That's an interesting viewpoint. And I think that what you shared about the Israeli people, from what we've seen, at least overseas, the Iranian people seem to be very much in support of this. From your vantage point, how is the war progressing at this moment? You had mentioned some key strikes that had taken out some of the regime leadership. Where are we at this point in the operation? Right. So there were a number of a series of attacks since Saturday morning that have begun really with eliminating the leaders and the leadership, the supreme leader that was on Saturday morning. And then since then, there have been attacks on ammunition factories and on bases of the IRGC. And at the moment, they're continuing to try and eliminate the ballistic missiles from being sent towards Israel for almost a week now, where Israelis are going in and out of bomb shelters. Luckily here in Israel, because we're kind of used to this situation, at the moment, there's only nine people who were killed in one of the Iranian strikes at the beginning of the week, including children. But the morale in Israel is very cautious, but positive, because we actually see the Middle East changing before our eyes in a way that we think is good for the West and good for Israel. Yeah. And our condolences, of course, for that strike that did take out civilians in Israel. Of course, Israel and the U.S. not going after civilian targets in Iran. And to that point, I want to understand the connection between the strength of the regime in Iran and what that would mean for Hezbollah, Houthis, potentially other threats to Israeli civilians, potentially even Hamas as well. I mean, it's become kind of a cliche talking about Iran and this regime as the head of the octopus or the one that's not only fueling terror but funding terror. The IDF exposed that just in 2025, Hezbollah was funded by $800 million from Iranian regime. When you have a country there, the economy is very bad and people are hungry for food, and they were spending this money on terror. So definitely when this regime falls, and hopefully that will happen in the very near future, that will have an effect on all the proxies, because the proxies are not as strong and as able to keep on shooting at Israel if this happens. Zvika, just in our last 30 seconds, what would you want Americans who may not have the same perspective as Israelis to understand about what's taking place? I think that this is very much an American concern. Iran threatens the U.S. every day. They speak—they'll burn the American flag. They try and sabotage educational institutions in the United States, as well as terror. So there's so many elements that have an effect on the Americans. Even though you don't feel in your day-to-day life like we do here in Israel, it's something that really much is in the interest of the United States. Zvika Klein, thank you for sharing your insights. Shabbat shalom. Thank you. Shabbat shalom, Kerry.