The War That Didn’t Start — and the People Left Behind

On a cool, unusually relaxed Friday morning in Tel Aviv, the city feels like it has exhaled. After two tense days of rumors, alerts, and the sense that a U.S. strike on Iran might be imminent, the immediate danger appears—at least for now—to have receded. But that calm comes with a bitter underside: Iranian demonstrators who were encouraged to take enormous risks are now facing a regime that still kills, while Washington appears to be stepping away. I look at the possible reasons behind Trump’s reversal—logistics, Gulf pressure, internal U.S. politics, and the hard reality of what it would take to sustain a campaign—and what that means for Israel’s missile-defense readiness after last year’s confrontations with Iran.Then we shift back to Israel’s own unresolved fronts: the Trump administration’s announcement that “stage two” of the Gaza plan has begun, the stalled reality of reconstruction and disarmament, and the lingering failure to return the last hostage’s body. Domestically, the countdown to elections tightens as the budget deadline approaches and Netanyahu fights to pass a draft-exemption law for the ultra-Orthodox—using political deals that many Israelis see as corrosive to the state. Finally, I take a tour through the week in AI: Google’s Gemini integrating with everyday services, Apple’s reported pivot, Anthropic’s Claude as a genuine working partner, and OpenAI’s move into medical records—along with a warning about where all of this leads if AI ever gets a body. Shabbat Shalom from Tel Aviv. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe