Summary

When IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir finished 2025, he was on track as one of the most popular IDF chiefs in recent memory. He had stormed onto the world stage in June 2025 leading Operation Rising Lion, Israel's remarkably successful massive strike on Iran's nuclear program, radars and air defenses, top military officials, and some ballistic missile sites. Next, he was the IDF chief in October 2025 when a deal was struck with Hamas to end the Gaza War, including the return of all remaining living and deceased hostages. But 2026 is still a work in progress, with some of Zamir's legacy in the balance. Iran is weaker, but the threat is far from gone Israel's early 2026 Operation Roaring Lion is viewed by most in Israel and globally as less successful than the 2025 operation. This is true even as the IDF did destroy significant aspects of Iran's ballistic missiles program, caused between $200-300 billion dollars of damage to its broader military industrial complex, and assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Regardless of the military successes, it has been highly problematic diplomatically, turning even more of the world against Israel. Also, Israel has lost additional important measures of support from the Trump administration over gas prices and the crisis in the Straits of Hormuz as well as over the fact that the Iranian regime survived and with an intransigent attitude. So what is the overall strategic and specific threats picture? In the view of the IDF high command, which Zamir directs, The Jerusalem Post has learned that biggest strategic win for Israel and which has been ignored by much of the global media, is Israel's advantage over Tehran after the 2026 war both in learning and advancing the other side's tactics and regarding capabilities, meaning gaining an upper hand in resupplying weapons and the ongoing arms race. Much of the global media has focused on the US's using up significant amounts of its air defense interceptors and attack bombs, which may leave it less able to block a theoretical Chinese move to take over Taiwan. While this is a critical debate for the US, Israel has no such disconnected second front where it would need to defend against an imminent and massive aerial enemy attack. Rather, Israel only needs to "race" against the Islamic Republic when it comes to the volume of offensive and defensive weapons needed to prosecute an extended new offensive or defensive war. In numbers, the Post understands that in the view of Israeli intelligence, this means that Israel has been racing ahead with new military surprises and tactics to unleash against Tehran in any potential future new conflict. In contrast, Iran's ability to embrace and prepare new tactics is limited two-fold. It is limited by its lack of funds and preoccupation with trying to stay above water militarily after having been so severely battered. Further, it is limited by the absence of any near-term horizon or moment in which it will be economically saved and be able to fully reopen up a process for recovery and for developing new projects. The Post understands that Zamir and the IDF high command view Israel as jumping years ahead in these areas, even if there are some other specific select areas where Iran may be able to remain more formidable. There is another crucial development in holding Iran back from restoring its former ballistic missiles and other sources of threat power. It is a mix of the 2026 war's destruction of Iran's future production capabilities in tandem with the US's stronger than expected post-war success in blocking China from resupplying ballistic missile technology and supplies to the Islamic Republic. The Post learned back in April that one of the greatest concerns of Israeli intelligence was to what extent China might hand over critical items to restore Iran's ballistic missile threat capabilities on a more wholesale basis. If without Beijing, Iran was viewed as being pushed back years backward, Israeli intelligence worried that China could hand over enough ballistic missile items rapidly enough to jumpstart the recovery process forward much faster. Although Israel does maintain that China has helped Iran recover some capabilities in this area, Zamir and the high command's view is that Washington has succeeded in blocking the vast majority of this assistance through its counter-blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. This is something which in April, no one expected would last into September or beyond. This means that after Israel destroyed Iran's planetary mixers in 2026, which were viewed as the key to rapid mass production of ballistic missiles, that the Islamic Republic could be left with trough mixers or other slower and inferior production processes. In contrast, if China had provided new planetary mixers and other items directly to Iran, the situation could have been much more dangerous. Due to the damage to ballistic missile production and the US success so far with the Chinese, the IDF expects Iran to remain under 2,000 missiles even at the end of 2026, the Post has learned. On one hand, that almost 2,000 number is very disturbing. There were earlier hopes that Iran could be held under or around 1,000 for a longer period, and Iran has shown impressive resiliency to rebuild aspects of its missile production in a very short time after the 2026 war. But in another sense, this is a significant near and medium term win for Zamir and Israel. All of this comes after Tehran had somewhere between 2,500-3,000 such missiles prior to the June 2025 war. It means that more than 18 months after that war, Iran will still have significantly fewer missiles than it had at the time. This is even more significant when one takes into account that the pace at which Iran was moving with ballistic missile production prior to June 2025 was expected to get it to over 6,000 missiles at an earlier point in 2026 and 8,800 missiles by August 2027. The existential ballistic missile threat has not been removed. But it has been delayed already more than two years, and by some estimates given to the Post by as many as four years, though those most optimistic estimates make certain assumptions which could evolve. Hezbollah is weaker, but Israel has no clear exit from Lebanon If after the 2023-2024 war, Hezbollah was down from 150,000 rockets and mortars to 30,000-50,000, the Post has learned that it is now as low as 10,000 following the IDF's war on it in 2026. That means Hezbollah's current arsenal is weaker than Hamas's was on October 7, 2023, when once the Lebanese terror group dwarfed the Gazan terror group in power (Hamas meanwhile has almost no rockets and has not succeeded in firing a rocket to harm Israelis in years, with its last major effective attack coming in January 2024.) The IDF also has made it currently impossible for Hezbollah to invade Israel by seizing an approximately 10 kilometer deep security zone in southern Lebanon. This does not mean Israel is safe from Hezbollah. There is currently no real process to disarm the group unlike in Gaza where there may be such a process with Hamas. The Lebanese army is still terrified of having a direct conflict with Hezbollah and the Post understands that as long as the army views the 1970s Lebanese civil war as its low point, and not the recent round of fighting with Israel, this is unlikely to change. Long-term this could leave Israel stuck in Lebanon like it was 1982-2000, something it does not want, due to military vulnerabilities and diplomatic harm from an extended occupation, and with no apparent exit strategy. Earlier hopes that the positive relations between the Lebanese and Israeli governments might be enough to pressure Hezbollah into even partial disarmament currently look like pipedreams in the eyes of Zamir and the IDF high command, the Post understands. But the IDF can only manage the military playing field, and converting military wins into strategic diplomatic gains, is the role of the civilian government. In Gaza, military gains collide with political limits This same issue is present in Gaza where the IDF has done its best to keep Hamas from making a comeback, but has no ability to force Israel's government to allow other Palestinian or international authorities into the Strip to try to replace Hamas. If the Netanyahu government does eventually allow the International Stabilization Forces (ISF) peacekeepers and the NCAG Palestinian technocratic committee into Gaza after months of delay (by both him and Hamas), it will be only due to pressure by the Trump administration. In the meantime, Zamir has warned that if Hamas's threat is not reduced either by diplomatic-political means or by a new major operation, the group could eventually start to reconstitute itself as a threat to Israel after years on the run. Eyal Zamir faces a two-front battle in the West Bank Through all of this, Zamir has inherited a multi-headed problem of terror emanating from the West Bank since early 2022. He has tried to order harsher crack downs on certain more problematic Palestinian areas, reducing aspects of the terror threat substantially – by some estimates as much as 80% - but nothing close to stopping the threat. At the same time, Zamir, along with the police, the Shin Bet, and the government more broadly, have lost control over several hundred violent Jewish extremists who have been regularly attacking both Palestinians and soldiers alike. Zamir has not fought with Defense Minister Israel Katz to restore administrative detention of violent Jews, a tool the Shin Bet has consistently demanded be returned to them for use. Rather, he has been strategic about public fighting with the defense minister, with a focus on keeping control of key IDF appointments and on pressing the government to draft more haredim. This has been despite pushes by Katz to make political-friendly appointments and to protect haredi political parties from any substantial concessions on drafting more young men from their sector into the military. Possibly Zamir's most dramatic moment was a leak in March of a private speech he made to the cabinet about the need to draft more haredim in which he said, “I am raising 10 red flags before the IDF collapses into itself.” More recently, he has also been more public lately about demanding government backing for combating Jewish extremist violence. On August 27, Zamir announced that he was expanding the Israeli forces being used to maintain public order in the West Bank leading into the upcoming fall Jewish holidays. The Post understands that the volume of forces will be more than double the pre-October 7 force size of around 11 battalions, which at times has grown to 15-20 battalions, but will temporarily grow even more. Zamir warned the government that Jewish extremist violence has run out of control and that greater backing is needed from the government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others actively restraining political officials from provocative actions. All of this takes place as IDF officials have said Jewish extremist violence has reached new levels, with hundreds of extremists recently drawing out a conflict with the IDF at the Palestinian village of Kusra for multiple weeks. It also takes place as IDF and Shin Bet officials say that the police, after three years under Itamar Ben-Gvir, have reached highly problematic lows in terms of arresting and helping indict Jewish extremists in the West Bank. None or almost none (the police have been at a low also in terms of transparency) of those involved in the Kusra actions were arrested. Accordingly, Zamir has brought in the Golani Brigade and the Paratroopers Brigade to supplement the standard forces in the area, some of which have appeared too sympathetic to Jewish extremists attacking Palestinian villages. However, without more backing from the government, Zamir has warned that even increased military forces will be insufficient. Looking into 2027, in some ways, Zamir has succeeded in making Israel more secure than it was in the 2023-2025 period. But almost every front remains a challenge, such that he will continue to have his work cut out for him. For a shorter version of this profile as it appears in The Jerusalem Post's 50 Most Influential Jews 2026 list, click here to read Zamir’s entry.