A strange irony is unfolding in the Middle East, as America’s military operations against Iran are being cheered more by Iran’s close neighbors than by the U.S. populace. Not only Israel but also the Gulf Arab states — to say nothing of Iran’s own oppressed people — are overjoyed that the U.S. military has taken the radical regime to the woodshed. But will America provide the requested encore?

“Politically, this is a war that is enormously popular on the part of the Israeli people,” American Foreign Policy Council Senior Vice President Ilan Berman explained on “Washington Watch.” “Because the Israelis have been living with this — what is effectively an existential threat of a radical Islamist regime acquiring the world’s most deadly weapons and threatening on a routine basis to wipe them out as a nation.” What’s more, Israelis have “been living with this for about a generation.”

The war’s popularity in Israel is noteworthy because, even more than the post-October 7 conflicts against Iran’s terrorist proxies, it has effectively shut down all normal life in the country, as the whole nation must remain in tense readiness for incoming Iranian missiles, which nearly always target civilians. “Kids haven’t gone to school since the start of the war a month ago,” said Berman. “Now the Jewish holidays are coming up next week. And so they will be out of school effectively for two months, maybe more.”

“It’s clearly enormously disruptive to the Israeli economy,” Berman added. “Disruption sets in in earnest the longer the conflict goes on because … Israel has a small standing army, but a large reserve corps. The more the reservists are called up for duty — both with regard to Iran and also with regard to Israel’s northern front in Lebanon — the longer this cycle goes on, the more disruptive it is to the fabric of society and to the economy.”

In Israel, “obviously there’s trepidation as to how this goes,” allowed Berman, but “there’s also trepidation about the potential for the White House to leave too early.”

“That’s a trepidation that’s shared by Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain,” Berman continued. “They have been attacked more than Israel has in the current conflict. And so, when they are talking to the White House, the message that they’re sending is, ‘You can’t leave too early. You have to degrade Iranian capabilities more. Because you’re separated from Iran by a large ocean. But we’re not.’”

While none of the Gulf Arab states have officially joined the war against Iran, they are all aiding the U.S. and may eventually enter into combat.

One wrench in the Trump administration’s efforts to establish diplomatic back-channels with the battered remnants of the Iranian regime is that “a deal that’s acceptable to the United States may be less so to Israel, less so to Iran’s Gulf neighbors,” Berman suggested. “And that’s going to be a line that the administration is going to have to walk, I think, very carefully. And that’s why you see a maximalist set of American demands that have now gone to Iran.”

Iran has already objected Trump’s initial demands, releasing its own demands that are just as intolerable to the Trump administration, as they would effectively amount to declaring an Iranian victory. If the two sides do reach an agreement, there would have to be quite a bit of compromise from both sides.

“Where we settle, I think, is going to tell us a lot about whether Israeli concerns and Gulf concerns have actually been taken into account,” Berman suggested. “If they haven’t been … you’re going to see a pretty significant militarization of the Middle East. Because, if the U.S. does a deal that leaves America’s Gulf allies and Israel out in the cold, these countries will have no choice but to band together and to arm themselves to the teeth. Because … they definitely understand right now that Iran is a dangerous, predatory regime, and it has to be deterred in some fashion.”

That would make the left-wing international security ecosystem — which mostly consists of organizations committed to disarmament of all stripes — go apoplectic. Perhaps the prospect could even persuade these organizations to support a continued U.S. role in the conflict, although it may be asking too much to suggest that any bona fide progressive agree with President Trump.

If the U.S. does extricate itself from the conflict, the future danger Iran will pose will “depend directly on the character of the regime that’s in power in Tehran,” suggested Berman. “The regime that the Trump administration is trying to degrade and destroy is a radical, expansionist Islamist movement; one that is a revisionist state; and one that wants to take the fight to the United States and its allies.”

“If there is a vanilla-type military dictatorship that emerges as a result of this conflict, it won’t be a democracy, but it will be better for the region because it will be more predictable,” he explained. “You’ll be able to deter it better than you can deter fanatical, messianic, religious authorities.”

Of course, there is also the remote possibility that “Iran becomes a Jeffersonian democracy because the Iranians rise up, and they overthrow the Islamic Republic in lasting fashion,” Berman continued, although he presented this option as unlikely due to the recent suppression of protests.

“The president has said to the Iranians that there will be a signal when they should come out to the streets and take their country back. I think there’s going to be a signal, but it’s an open question whether they’re going to actually be able to come out and do that,” he elaborated. “The Iranian regime killed 36,000 Iranians over the span of 10 days during the most recent protests. So, if the Iranians aren’t coming out now, it’s because they’re worried and they don’t see that empty political space yet. And they may not.”

The inability to count on internal revolt — certainly the result most in line with American inclinations — has forced the Trump administration to consider other options. “[It’s] why you see, as the time goes on, increasingly the White House moving towards some sort of compromise with the existing remnants of the regime,” said Berman.

Thus, Berman concluded, “everything stems not from the destructive capabilities of the regime, but from the character of the regime that wields them.” The Trump administration will likely carry out its campaign of degradation until the Iranian regime lies totally prostrate, defanged, and anaesthetized at its feet — total victory. But popular or congressional disapproval in the U.S. may, like a “low fuel” light, force America off another exit before it reaches the highway’s end.

But that is not the result the Trump administration wants to see, nor Israel, nor our Arab partners in the region. If America “loses” the war with Iran, in spite of our battlefield domination, the blame will belong solely to the president’s critics who are stoking defeatism and cowardice in the face of an existential foe.