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William Keenan

William Keenan

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

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Rahm Emanuel – Israel’s Flashing Red Warning Indicator

Rahm Emanuel – Israel’s Flashing Red Warning Indicator

A Warning Delivered by a Vote Counter, Not a Moralizer Rahm Emanuel’s forthcoming speech at Tel Aviv University — declaring that the U.S.–Israel...

previous day 20

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The Middle East — The Memory Palace of Civilizations

The Middle East — The Memory Palace of Civilizations

The Cradle of Civilization Civilization emerged first in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and soon afterward along the Nile....

06.07.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Haym Salomon: The Indispensable Jewish American Patriot

Haym Salomon: The Indispensable Jewish American Patriot

A Polish-born immigrant twice imprisoned as a spy became the financier the Continental Army could not do without — and paid for it with everything...

04.07.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israel, Palestine, and Canaan: Myth, Archaeology, History, and Geopolitics

Israel, Palestine, and Canaan: Myth, Archaeology, History, and Geopolitics

Who Belongs to the Levant? Why the Question Resists a Single Answer The competing claims to the Levant are routinely framed as a binary historical...

03.07.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israel’s strategic security hinges on Gaza, not the UAE

For the last six years, a particular narrative has circulated through the pro‑Israel media ecosystem: that the future of Middle Eastern stability...

27.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Without Israel There Would Be No America?

The Ambassador of Christian Nationalism When U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee declared, “Without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there...

26.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran Deal: Israel’s Reckoning With The Limits of Influence

The Iran War of 2026 did more than reshape the regional order. It delivered a verdict on a question Israeli policymakers have spent three years...

25.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Senator Cory Booker’s Iran Deal Dilemma

A Senator Exposes a Democratic Messaging Problem In his June 23rd interview on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, Senator Cory Booker placed...

22.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran Deal: The Strategic Reality That Trump’s Critics Are Missing

“Israel’s situation is worse than at any point since the state’s establishment… Netanyahu bet everything on Trump, and Israel lost at the...

21.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran Deal: Has the Time Come for a Real Abraham Accords?

The fourteen-point memorandum of understanding signed between Washington and Tehran on June 17 commits the United States and its regional partners to...

19.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israel’s Day After – The Limits of Military Dominance

The last three years has made a simple truth unavoidable: military dominance is no longer a reliable path to lasting security in the Middle East....

16.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Strategic Implications of the Imminent Iran Deal

A Stalemate Wrapped in a Deal The Memorandum of Understanding expected to be agreed upon by Iran and the United States  in the coming days will...

14.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israeli Fears Are Legitimate – But That Is True for Iranians and Palestinians

Israelis have perfectly rational reasons to believe they live under existential threat. This is not a matter of exaggeration or political theater; it...

12.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Why Trump Is Pivoting on Iran

“If we go and bomb — which we can do very easily — and we spend another two or three weeks bombing, they’ll have nothing left whatsoever, but...

10.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War Day 101: Mother of All Catch 22s

The crisis unfolding between Washington, Jerusalem, and Tehran has entered a phase that feels less like strategy and more like a trap. It is a trap...

08.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Concerns About the U.S.–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative

Section 224, included in the House Armed Services Committee’s chairman’s mark of the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, would establish...

07.06.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: The CIA-ODNI Turf War That Wasn’t

Why Tuslsi Gabbard Had to Go Recent reporting on Tulsi Gabbard’s departure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has focused on a...

05.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Out-Hawking the Hawk: Why the Israeli Opposition Has No Iran Strategy

The Familiar Political Temptation Israel’s opposition is pursuing a familiar political strategy. Faced with an electorate shaped by the failures of...

03.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

“Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Axios’s account of an expletive-laden phone call between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu has landed at a fraught moment. According to a...

02.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The Iran War and the Collapse of the Gaza International Stabilization Force

Netanyahu’s Predictable Strategy When UNSC 2803 established the Gaza Board of Peace, I assessed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not...

29.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

U.S.-Israeli Pressure Won’t Force Saudi Normalization

The Trump administration’s decision to explicitly link a future Iran agreement with mandatory participation in the Abraham Accords materially...

26.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Trump Let Israel Down by Deferring to Netanyahu

Donald Trump’s decision to follow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s maximalist assumptions on Iran, rather than the cautionary advice of key...

25.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: The Phone Call That Set Netanyahu’s Hair on Fire

The Iran war had already entered a phase that Robert Kagan — one of the most influential architects of American neoconservative interventionism —...

24.05.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israel-US War to Topple Iranian Regime Was Lost in Gaza

The plan to topple Iran’s regime from the outside was always implausible because it depended on two prerequisites that did not exist: broad,...

22.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Trump and the Buried Iranian Enriched Uranium

When “Public Relations” Becomes Strategic Policy On May 14, 2026, speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity from Beijing, President Donald Trump made...

20.05.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Featured Post

Near the end of his recent 60 Minutes interview, Benjamin Netanyahu picked up a smartphone and held it toward the camera. It was a telling gesture —...

16.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: ‘I Don’t Think About American Financial Situation.’ — Trump

“I don’t think about American financial situation — I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear...

13.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War Day 73: Checkmate at the Chokepoint?

America’s Strategic Failure in the War on Iran In a striking assessment published in The Atlantic on May 10, 2026, Robert Kagan argues that the...

11.05.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The Debate Over AI Intelligence Systems Misses the Point

A Technology Problem That Is Not a Technology Problem In boardrooms, legislative chambers, academic journals, and newspaper opinion pages, the debate...

10.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The Kushner Portfolio: Broker or Architect of the New Middle East

As the Iran War enters its ninth week, diplomatic efforts continue in hope of finding a formula at least marginally acceptable to the U.S., Israel,...

06.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Trump May Not Care About Hormuz, Oil Prices, or the Midterms

Recent polling confirms what Democratic strategists have been watching for months: the party now holds a lead of between three and ten points on the...

02.05.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: Day 63 — The Economic Battlespace

The confrontation between the United States and Iran has entered a new and potentially more dangerous phase. Although Iran’s nuclear program remains...

30.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran war: The Hormuz choke point exposed the AI choke point

The future of AI will not be decided by who writes the best code, but by who can keep electrons flowing, copper moving, and molecules arriving through...

27.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: Wishful Hubris Is Not Strategic Analysis

Regardless of the legitimacy of Israel’s objectives in the Iran War, and regardless of how the conflict ultimately ends, the war has already exposed...

25.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Hormuz Crisis Day 51: Timeline of Political and Economic Instability

The Strait of Hormuz has now been effectively closed for fifty-one days. What makes this crisis feel simultaneously compressed and unmanageable is not...

22.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

With God on His Side — Trump’s Religious Messaging

The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor That if God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war  – Bob Dylan The Analyst’s Mandate...

20.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Christian Nationalism and the Israeli Dilemma

Who Are Christian Nationalists and What Do They Believe Christian Nationalism has become a significant force in American public life, shaping...

18.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Gaza: The Forgotten Middle East Strategic Center of Gravity

For all the attention now fixed on Iran, Lebanon, and the widening arc of regional instability, the strategic center of gravity in the Middle East...

16.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Trump’s Theatrics, Threats, and Rhetoric Are Undermining NATO Cohesion

President Trump’s growing frustration with NATO members’ refusal to join U.S. efforts to either unblock or block the Strait of Hormuz has become a...

15.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The US–Israel Disconnect: Polling, Politics, and the Palestinians

April 2026 Pew Research Center polling documents a marked realignment in American public opinion toward Israel along age, partisan, and religious...

14.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

The Decision to Go to War with Iran: What Was Trump Thinking?

The decision by President Donald Trump to authorize a joint U.S.–Israeli strike on Iran in late February has prompted intense debate about how the...

12.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Benefits and Risks of CIA Moving to AI-Assisted Intelligence Analysis

Benefits and Risks of CIA Moving to AI-Assisted Analysis What the Agency Is Doing: Senior CIA leadership has announced that AI assistants will be...

10.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Israel’s Moment of Truth: Lessons Not Learned

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” This 5th Century BCE admonition by the Chinese general...

08.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

President Trump Threatens to Destroy the Iranian Civilization

When a President Threatens a Civilization with Destruction, We Need to Ask Some Very Serious Questions This morning, President Donald Trump posted on...

07.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Attacks on Civilian Infrastructure – War Crime and Dangerous Escalation

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social. “There will be nothing...

05.04.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Trump: ‘Take the Oil and Make a Fortune’

The medium is Truth Social. The message is imperialism. “With a little time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A...

04.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: Trump’s Dilemma Is Now the World’s Dilemma

How a War We Did Not Choose Became a Crisis We Cannot Escape The United States entered the Iran conflict under circumstances that never persuaded most...

02.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: Strait of Hormuz — Coalition Redundancy and Interoperable AWACS

A Region Defined by Visibility Airborne early warning has always been the quiet backbone of stability in the Gulf. In a region shaped by dense air...

31.03.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

End-Times Belief and the Iran War: When Prophecy Replaces Intelligence

On the morning of March 2, 2026, according to a complaint later filed with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a combat-unit commander told...

30.03.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan

Iran War: Strait of Hormuz — The U.S. and NATO Disconnect

The Strait of Hormuz has always been more than a narrow maritime passage. It is the point where multiple strategic ecosystems converge: NATO’s...

28.03.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

William Keenan