[DW] The PISA 2025 results reveal record-low student performance, with digital distractions and AI use raising concerns. Germany is faring worse than ever.
The results of the 2025 PISA study, published on September 8, show a dramatic drop in performance in reading and mathematics around the world.
The Program for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, is a global study that measures how well 15-year-old students can apply their knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics and science to real-life situations. The test is designed to measure problem-solving skills rather than evaluate students on memorized school facts, which means they cannot revise in preparation for it.
First administered in 2000, it is considered the world's most influential measure of educational performance.
In 2025, more than 760,000 students in 91 countries and economies took the test.
The study always includes in its ranking the average of the international group of 38 advanced, high-income countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD.
DOWNWARD TREND IN STUDENTS' PERFORMANCES
Between 2015 and 2025, reading skills have seen the most significant decline, decreasing by 28 points in OECD countries, and by 16 points in the other participating countries and economies.
Scores in math have dropped by 22 points across the OECD on average, compared to a decline of 8 points in the rest of the world.
In science, the focus of the 2025 PISA assessment, a seven-point decline was measured in OECD countries, while the performances in other countries and economies remained broadly stable.
Nearly a third of OECD students considered 'low performers'
The latest PISA study reveals that around 29% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries are now estimated to be "low performers" across all three subjects.
What does this mean?
In science, they struggle to interpret simple data or decipher a graph. In reading, they find it hard to find information in simple texts. In mathematics, they might be unable to understand, for example, the relationship between units and price — basic skills needed for grocery shopping.
DROP IN GLOBAL READING SCORES MOST CONCERNING
Across the OECD, reading scores fell by 25 score points on average.
The study points out that 20 score points are about equivalent to a year of learning. This implies that most 15-year-old students were performing at the level typically expected of 14-year-olds.
Among the OECD countries, the drops were most extreme in Iceland and Slovenia, with scores going down by more than 50 points.
Reading scores improved in five countries only: Qatar (up 11 points), Brunei Darussalam (18), Cambodia (26), the Philippines (27) and Zambia (50). Even though these education systems are still below the OECD average, they "deserve recognition for achieving measurable gains despite the broader global decline," notes the study.
NOT ALL SCHOOLS ARE EQUAL IN GERMANY
In some countries, such as Iceland, Cambodia and Finland, for example, there is very little variation in performance among schools, showing less than 10% overall variation in student achievement.
But in 10 countries, including Germany, differences among schools account for at least 50% of the total variation in performance.
The study notes that these countries' systems presumably have schools reserved for higher-achieving students, leaving disproportionately large numbers of lower-achieving students enrolled in the other institutions.
For the authors of the PISA study presentation, this is a problem that needs to be taken seriously: "Where such academic segmentation compounds with social background, it can amplify inequalities, producing pockets of excellence while failing to ensure consistent learning outcomes across the education system as a whole."
GERMANY'S PISA SHOCKS
The very first PISA study was held in the year 2000. As one of the 31 participating countries, Germany was shocked to discover that its 15-year-olds scored below the international average.
In the last PISA test, held in 2022 and published in 2023, the scores of German students had dropped to a new low.
In the latest study, scores have plunged even deeper.
Between 2022 and 2025, reading scores plummeted by 15 points and math scores by 11 points, while science scores have gone down by seven.
The top six rankings in reading skills are held by Asian countries. Germany barely remains above the OECD average, coming in 24th. The United States comes in 13th position, Poland ranks 14th and Turkey 18th.
In math, Germany is below the OECD average, coming in 26th, just a rank above the United States. All top seven positions are held by Asian countries, followed by Estonia in the 8th spot.
In science, Germany is only two score points above the OECD average, ranking 23rd. Turkey made important progress in this field, now ranking 19th, with an increase of 18 score points since the 2022 study.
WHY IS EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE FALLING GLOBALLY OVERALL?
The data itself cannot explain the decline in reading skills, but the authors of the study note that while school closures due to COVID-19 may be one factor, there is no direct relationship between how long schools closed during the pandemic and the students' performances in reading.
There was already a downward trend in many countries long before the pandemic struck, the study notes.
These long-term declines in skills "suggest deeper structural issues within education systems, with challenges at the school and system level," according to the study. These challenges include the impact of digital distractions on students and growing disinterest towards reading books.
AI has had an immediate impact on learning. The 2025 PISA study asked students about their use of AI in schoolwork; more than 40% said they used it to draft texts for writing assignments once or twice a week, or even every day. Students who reported using AI chatbots got lower scores in science, on average, than those who didn't use AI.
"Overall, the data suggests weaknesses in how education systems are adapting to social, technological and economic change," states the study's summary. "Looking ahead, the challenge for policymakers is not simply recovering lost ground, but to ensure schools meet the rapidly changing demands of the world. As PISA shows, it is not an easy task."
While waiting for policymakers to react, the study suggests that parents can contribute to children's potential by being supportive and curious about their studies and helping them develop positive attitudes towards school. "Even something as simple as asking children what they learned or did at school, about once a week or more, is associated with an average 26-point increase in science performance, after accounting for socio-economic status."
#3
‘Smartphones’ why remember anything when you can look it up on your smartphone? Need to change a tire, look it up on your smartphone. Need directions, look it up on your smartphone. Bad teachers and social media just make things worse.
Six: The U.S. border with Mexico is secure, or about as secure as it can get.
Seven: After an unnerving dip during the Covid years, U.S. life expectancy has risen to the highest in American history.
Eight: An astounding pace of new medical breakthroughs.
Nine: High school graduation rates are at or near record highs.
Ten: Much like the mortality rate, the fatal accident rate spiked during and immediately after the pandemic but has now dropped to record lows.
There were a couple other positive developments I didn’t put on this list of ten, because they’re long-developing trends:
The adult smoking rate is down, below 10 percent for the first time ever.
AIDS is barely discussed anymore, "HIV-related mortality rates (deaths with HIV noted as the underlying cause of death), rose steadily through the 1980s and peaked in 1995, but have dropped by 9-fold since then, and by over half since 2010." Diagnoses are down, lifespans with the virus are longer, and for those infected, the risk of transmission can be greatly mitigated through prescription medication.
Whatever you think of Americans’ declining consumption of alcohol, a decline in alcoholism is welcome: "The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released late last month, found that the share of people 12 and older who qualified for a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder fell to 8.9 percent in 2025 from 10.6 percent in 2021 — or by about 4 million people."
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/11/2026 07:55 ||
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#1
AIDS is barely discussed anymore,
Because the sector of the population that was transmitting it largely killed itself off. Another hoax 'AIDs pandemic among straights' never developed. Another scaremongering for funding.
#4
Nine: High school graduation rates are at or near record highs.
Permit me to retort. While I agree that things are generally good compared to any time in the last 100,000 years, the graduation rate is misleading. Yes, more kids are graduating, but notice that reading and math scores have fallen dramatically. Seems a bit contradictory, eh?
tl;dr: someone is cooking the books. Probably in the name of equity.
[TH] It's Kurt
It’s nearly impossible to explain to people whose conscious lives did not begin before 9/11 exactly what that day meant, and how stark the boundary was between the America before and the America after. That this is the 25th anniversary is, upon reflection, shocking. How can it be that long ago? I remember it like yesterday because that was the day everything changed. If you are under 35, you were not really aware of life before the semihuman jihadi scum murdered 2,977 Americans and others. You could have had an entire military career in that time. It’s mind-boggling. And it’s worth reflecting on what it meant, and what it still means.
September 11, 2001, was not the day America began the long war. It was the day America became aware of the long war pagan enemies had been waging against us for decades. We took casualties here and there, but we told ourselves — particularly after we prevailed in the long, expensive Cold War — that history was over. The struggle between good and evil had culminated. We had won. There was no real opposition to the Western democracy we embodied, except some scattered nutballs who blew up the occasional building or shot up the occasional airport. Those casualties were less than a rounding error. We could take that kind of damage without noticing it, without changing anything. We were at peace. Or so we thought.
Our enemies did not think so. We had enemies, even if we were too busy enjoying ourselves to acknowledge it. 9/11 threw the truth in our face.
History wasn’t over. History will never be over. And the fight against evil will never be over.
I was putting on a suit to make a court appearance in San Pedro — there was a San Pedro, CA courthouse back then — when the phone rang. It was my law partner, Erik. "America is under attack," he blurted. I flipped on the TV. I think that was just after the second plane hit the second tower. Irina and I looked at the carnage for a moment. "I’m going to war," I said, and I was sort of right. A few years later I would be mobilized for 16 months and ordered to Kosovo, a hostile-fire zone but essentially a sideshow in the struggle against international terrorism. It’s some consolation that nobody hears about Kosovo, because we kept a lid on it and kept a Muslim country with some jihadi actors stable and fiercely pro-American.
I was on an infantry brigade staff in the California Army National Guard, and on the phone with my commander as I drove to court. For all we knew, the attack was still going on. We didn’t know if Los Angeles was next. Would a 767 from LAX fly into the Library Tower — you know, that skyscraper where the hippies in Independence Day are celebrating before the flying saucer zaps them? We didn’t know what would happen next. We just knew our lives had changed.
Court was canceled. I came back to Manhattan Beach. Nobody went to work. We watched the news the rest of the day, and speculation turned to who the culprits were. It was pretty clear early on that it was Muslim fanatics. It was also pretty clear that we had to kill them all. We had some moral clarity then, while the wreckage was still smoking. It was George W. Bush’s finest hour. He got Congress to authorize — 420-1 in the House, 98-0 in the Senate, the lone "no" from one socialist dirtbag congresswoman — our campaign of righteous retribution, which continues to this day and must continue until every person who had a paw in this, and those still carrying the jihadi banner, have paid for what they did.
In the week of the attacks, America understood that 9/11 had to be answered with the full weight of American wrath. Many of us still understand it. If there is one overriding failure in the war on terror, it is that we did not kill enough of the terrorists. Instead, we focused on turning savages into civilized human beings. Our forebears had it right when they dealt with barbarians, whether Roman or British or whoever was disciplining the primitives. It was time to dust off the punitive expedition: go into the territory of the people who attacked you and cause so much damage that the savages use your name to scare their children for the next hundred generations.
Then the morally confused and the malign began to hint that perhaps we deserved it. Perhaps we had no right to fight back. Perhaps fighting prior terrorism had provoked it.
Or perhaps we did it ourselves — the idiotic 9/11 truthers are still out there.
Nonsense. Islamic radicals attacked us not because we like Israel, and not because of some bogus gripe, but because we will not submit to their primitive desert cult. That’s a hard truth for people who cannot conceive of America being in the right. We were in the right. We remain in the right. As for the violence we inflicted in return, they forgot a basic truth: violence must be met with violence. Too many in the West believe the schoolmarm mantra that violence never solves anything. History teaches the opposite. Violence solves everything.
We are either going to fight our way to victory or fail to fight our way into defeat and submission. I’m with the people who want to keep fighting these savages.
But that’s the problem — the forever-war thing. After 9/11, everything changed, and we have been at war every day since. We will be at war every day until we kill enough of them to make them irrelevant, or they convince an overwhelming majority of us to surrender. Some of us will never surrender. We prefer death on a pile of hot brass to submission to goat-molesting fanatics from Scumbagistan. But when the lieutenant governor of Minnesota or the governor of New York shows up in Muslim headgear so as not to offend the local Mohammedans, you know a slice of our society yearns to be handmaidens to the barbarians.
Before 9/11, we were at peace, even with Soviet H-bombs figuratively hanging over our heads. Most of America had never seen war, especially after the disgraceful end of Vietnam, when Democrats previewed their abandonment of Afghanistan by abandoning South Vietnam after promising to support it. Only about 500,000 of us went to Desert Storm out of a population of about 250 million. Not too many years after 9/11, you walked onto an Army post and everybody had a combat zone service patch on the right shoulder — not just the occasional Gulf War guy or an old-timer from ’Nam.
If you’re under 35, you don’t remember America at peace. You don’t remember an America that was normal in the way Boomers and Gen X understand normal. It wasn’t a draft. Most of us didn’t ship out like in World War II. But this war was going on overseas. And on 9/11 it was going on here: New York, Washington, the Pentagon (my friend Colonel Rob Maness was there), and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Since then, there have been other strikes by the psychopaths’ affiliates, creeps who shot up Americans for Allah. What 9/11 did was not send all of us to war. It put all of us in the sights of our enemies.
Now, a quarter-century later, people are tired of war. Well, people need to man up. It’s a harsh world. Just because the pre-9/11 years were a relatively peaceful interregnum does not mean peace is the natural state of mankind. It wasn’t. It isn’t. That’s an illusion.
9/11 taught us a lot. The most gratifying lesson was the heroism of regular Americans in the face of evil — helping people out of burning buildings, or counterattacking the terrorists on United 93, sacrificing their lives and probably saving hundreds or thousands of others. What we did that day, and what we did afterward in hunting the vermin who dared murder Americans, is a tribute to our greatness.
But 9/11 also taught us that we are not exempt from history. The war against evil will never end. We have always been in it, even when it didn’t seem like it, and we always will be. So we have a choice. We can pretend we have no enemies, and that, to the extent we do, it’s our own fault. Or we can accept that there are bad people who want us enslaved or dead.
The reality 9/11 taught us is that we have enemies, we have to fight them, we have to defeat them, and that war is never going to end. Grow up. Lock and load, or lose.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/11/2026 09:21 ||
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[NY Post] NEVER F*CKING FORGET
I was working for New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner when the unthinkable happened on Sept. 11, 2001.
As a death investigator, I would usually go to an apartment or the streets to investigate a homicide, a suicide or an accidental death.
Now it was my job to "work the pile" — that is, to recover and catalog the shattered human remains found in the burning, smoking rubble of the World Trade Center.
I had been at the OCME for nine years and had seen all manner of death.
Nothing could have prepared me for the enormity of this tragedy.
After some months my boss, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch, called a meeting — even in the maw of death, there must be meetings.
He wanted to brief the city Department of Buildings and the newly formed 9/11 memorial committee about which artifacts would be held for future exhibition: Nothing that might contain the dust of human remains could be released.
It was a moment of tension in the ME’s conference room, as all of us did our best not to dwell on what these artifacts represented in the everyday lives of the dead.
It wasn’t just what was in front of us; it was the loop of news videos that had been imprinted on all our minds over those terrible months.
The worst of them, arguably, were those documenting the people falling out of the buildings’ highest windows, some 100 stories up.
It was impossible to emotionally detach from those lonely tragedies — to stop the thoughts of what those victims may have felt in their last moments.
As Dr. Hirsch spoke about those who died in the impact zone where the planes hit, someone in the group made a reference to "the jumpers, the suicides."
My boss was always calm and dignified, but at that moment I saw the strain on his face as he tried to maintain his composure.
His anger was palpable.
He put his hands flat on the table in front of him and said, "Never use those words. Never."
They were pushed out, he explained, by flames and smoke.
Men and women were standing on the sills of the World Trade Center hoping for a miracle rescue, struggling for air to survive.
They were clinging to the window frames, straining toward the sky to draw breath.
Some lost their grip; some were forced to let go.
The terminology matters deeply, because the medical examiner determines the manner of death by strict protocols.
Suicide refers to "death at the hands of oneself with intent to die."
Homicide is defined as "death at the hands of another."
It is a fact that terrorists pushed these people to their deaths, murdering them.
There was no evidence of suicide among the 2,753 people who lost their lives at the World Trade Center that day.
Every one of the estimated 200 people who came down from the windows was pushed by forces beyond their control.
More coverage on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11:
That’s why every single death certificate of those who died on 9/11 reads "Homicide."
It matters, too, because some families of the murdered adhere to religious traditions that teach that suicide is an unforgiveable sin.
We’ve seen heartbreaking cases of family members denouncing lost loved ones when confronted with the possibility that they intentionally jumped.
And yet, the National September 11 Museum posts a sign outside a room where images of the falling people are displayed referencing "those who jumped."
With the help of curators and directors there, I have sought to change that notice.
The museum’s Signage Committee has declined, saying no one else seems to be bothered by it.
I am bothered.
Like Dr. Hirsch, those words make me angry — and sad, and hurt.
To call these people "jumpers" fails to capture the anguish they experienced, their lack of choice.
It doesn’t honor them; it blames the victims rather than the terrorists.
Call them "those who fell from the windows" — or who were "pushed out by forces beyond their control."
Whatever we choose, let’s use the right words.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/11/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
What I saw left of the WTC Marriott a few days after 9-11 will always stay with me.
#6
Here is one for you.
A 2 of the 9-11 Terrorists Lived and Worked in Duluth/Norcross area. 1 worked at the corner family grocery conveince Store less than 1/2 mile from my house, and across the street from the Gwinnett Mall. The other stayed in the Islamic Community area near the Atlanta Fuel Farms.
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi both used Briscoe Field in Lawerenceville GA. for training also.
#7
Then there is the unsolved Seth Rich murder. No, don't believe in coincidences either. Joe di Geneva an wife are "sidelined" and resign from an , investigation that appears to point toward Brennan, Comey and Soetoro, then fizzled out?
**The Bush administration authorized the evacuation of approximately 140–142 Saudi nationals, including around two dozen members of the Bin Laden family, from the U.S. in the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks.** These departures occurred via private jets and chartered flights between **September 12 and 19, 2001**, while U.S. airspace was still restricted or only partially reopened.
Key details from investigations and reporting include:
- **No FBI Interviews**: The evacuated Saudis, including potential witnesses who could have provided leads on al-Qaeda, left the U.S. **without being interviewed by the FBI**.
- **Official Denial vs. Evidence**: While the White House initially denied the flights occurred, former high-level officials and documents confirm the departures were authorized. The **9/11 Commission** concluded there was no misconduct, stating approvals were granted bureaucratically by counterterrorism official Richard Clarke rather than through political intervention.
- **Controversy**: Critics, including Michael Moore (*Fahrenheit 9/11*) and Craig Unger, alleged the evacuations were a "free pass" influenced by the Bush family’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia and the Carlyle Group. The 9/11 Commission found no evidence of a direct conflict of interest in the clearance process but acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue.
#10
FWIW I remember 90% of the Saudi royal family getting on board their private jets and flying to Switzerland. Geneva and Zurich VIP ramps were full for the first couple weeks after the event. It was actually a tell to me when they headed for home.
From the mid-1990s until August 2024, a running line of top Mossad and IDF officials made it their mission to block Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
When Shlomi Binder was sworn in as the Military Intelligence chief in August 2024, he took up the baton and he and his team of top intelligence officials have pursued the crusade with tremendous tenacity.
Since August 2024, the IDF intelligence team under Binder, along with the Mossad, the air force, and others has managed the bombing of Natanz, Isfahan, and dozens of other sites, and provided the critical intelligence used by the US to bomb Fordow in June 2025.
This period also led to the direct assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the dissection of Iran’s ballistic missile and wider military apparatus.
To be sure, the air force dropped the bombs, and the Mossad delivered on key special missions. But if Israel struck Iran around a staggering 4,000 times in June 2025 and around an unthinkable 18,000 times in 2026, the intelligence for well over 90% of those strikes came from Binder and his juggernaut IDF intelligence teams.
Where has IDF intelligence’s crusade left Iran’s nuclear weapons program, five months after the 2026 war and 15 months after the 2025 war?
The Jerusalem Post has learned that the positives are that Iran currently has no centrifuges enriching uranium, all or most of its more enriched uranium is not yet easily accessible, and that most of the regime’s nuclear facilities were destroyed or forced out of operation by the 2025-2026 strikes.
There has been no period of time in decades where enrichment was brought down to zero.
For decades, its facilities expanded and never really contracted, and while operations attributed to the Mossad managed to take one or more facilities offline for temporary periods, at no point was the whole active program broken or shuttered.
Even during "pause" periods from 2003 to 2007 and from 2015 to 2018, large aspects of Iran’s nuclear program were frozen, not broken, and new aspects were almost always being built, even if under the radar.
However, the Post has learned that despite these achievements, future concerns are greater than hoped for right after the 2025-2026 operations.
While the vast majority of Iran’s 20,000 centrifuge fleet was destroyed or rendered unusable, a not insignificant number of centrifuges survived deep underground.
Moreover, multiple sources have expressed concern to the Post that even if only a few hundred advanced IR-6 centrifuges (for enriching uranium) can be salvaged and hooked up again at some medium-term point, that could be enough, at some later undefined point, to secretly weaponize enough uranium for a bomb.
Also, multiple sources are worried that the Iranians could pull off some kind of clandestine digging mission to extract their more enriched uranium from under rubble and underground in a way that sidesteps US and other surveillance.
Regular satellite reports by the Institute for Science and International Security and others show that Iran has added structures on an ongoing basis to block certain areas from continuous satellite coverage.
These same open-source reports have noted the Iranians digging in a variety of areas, sometimes not all that close to the main parts of a nuclear facility that was struck.
Digging underground from a distance could take months or years to smuggle out the 60% enriched uranium, or in some areas 20% enriched uranium. But only maybe around one tenth would need to be clandestinely transferred to have a basis for a nuclear weapon.
Binder’s view is not that Iran is likely to outwit American and Israeli intelligence, but neither does he want to underestimate or discount Iranians’ often surprising and powerful resourcefulness.
That means that the key to the whole picture to some extent is again shifting from uranium enrichment to weapons group issues.
One of the highest priorities — but less reported aspects — of the Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear program sites was hitting not only the enrichment facilities, but also the facilities for converting enriched uranium into uranium metal and into hemispheres for use on a nuclear warhead.
Without these and other items, even large quantities of weaponized uranium will do Iran no good, because it will not be able to deliver the uranium 1,000 or more kilometers away in Israeli territory.
The Post understands that thwarting Tehran from rebuilding such weapons group facilities is one of Binder’s top focuses, and so far the regime has not made any serious progress on the issue.
All of this leaves a highly complex picture where the nuclear program is far more damaged than some critics have said, but where there are more gaps in that damage than top Israeli officials, political or defense, admitted right after each round of fighting.
Iran’s nuclear program was set back by some years, and its ability to reconstitute it was also set back. Yet in some ways, Iranian ingenuity has kept the threat alive and able to return, even if less broadly and with great difficulty.
Pickaxe Mountain
Major news was made in a July 13 interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, when US President Donald Trump said, "We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready," while in another breath said, "We see no activity there."
Pickaxe Mountain, once operational, will be the deepest underground nuclear facility the Iranians have ever built, significantly deeper than even the Fordow underground nuclear facility. It is hotly debated whether even the extremely unique and expensive 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator mega bunker buster bomb could penetrate it.
The second part of Trump’s statement about Iran’s nuclear facility at Pickaxe Mountain — that there is no activity there; or as the hawkish Institute for Science and International Security has put it, that the facility is still not operational — is the major reason that neither the US president nor Israel has ordered a strike to date, despite his first statement promising to attack.
Across the board, top US and Israeli defense sources told the Post in classified briefings earlier in the summer that there was no current threat from the site, and that the best reason to target it would, at most, be to eliminate a potential future threat.
All of these views contradicted the stunning July 14 reports by The Wall Street Journal and CNN that Israeli intelligence had told the US that Iran had moved thousands of centrifuges and also enriched uranium to Pickaxe Mountain.
In an article on the issue on July 21, none of the several sources that had told the Post that there was no current threat at Pickaxe Mountain clarified the matter, despite several attempts by the Post to get to the bottom of the dispute.
Since then, the Post has more recently clarified the issue.
Both the Mossad and IDF intelligence view Pickaxe Mountain as a strategic threat that must be removed at some point, because it is so difficult to attack.
In addition, both agencies highly prefer to do so before it becomes operational and before the Iranians manage to move sufficient assets there to operate centrifuges and enrich uranium.
The Post understands that what occurred in July was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to get Trump to strike Iran, with Pickaxe Mountain being one of the top-of-the-line potential targets.
Senior Israeli defense officials leaned into the issue also because they thought it might be a unique chance to finally rid themselves of the hovering potential threat.
It remains somewhat unclear whether Israeli political officials exaggerated how operational Pickaxe Mountain was, whether one or more Israeli defense officials assisted with this, or whether American officials afterward exaggerated what they had been told.
But as of early September, the Post understands that Pickaxe Mountain remains high on Binder’s list of concerns, but that the facility is still not operational.
One recent change is that some Israeli officials have voiced to the Post greater confidence than in the past about the ability of allied air forces to disable the facility, even if destroying it might not be possible.
All of this highlights that Binder’s view is that the Iranian threat has not passed, that any agreement that gives Tehran the right to enrich to 3.67%, like the 2015 deal, would keep the threat alive, and that Israel must be ready for the real possibility of needing to attack the Islamic Republic at some point in the not-so-distant future.
What about recent talk of Russia providing Iran with supersonic missiles which will be harder for Israel to shoot down?
No one is getting too detailed on this issue yet, and some of the challenges are just starting to evolve, but it does not yet seem to be at the top of the IDF’s list of concerns about Iran.
Regime change
While Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Mossad Director Roman Gofman still mention regime change publicly and privately, that term has mostly disappeared from the IDF lexicon.
IDF officials are no less enthusiastic about the idea in theory. Regime change has the best chance of promising a long-term end to Iran threatening the Jewish state.
But IDF high command officials, including Binder, were highly skeptical that the regime would easily and quickly fall when they went to war with the Islamic Republic in early 2026, and they believe the chances of this occurring are even more dubious now.
Neither Binder nor other top IDF officials favored the plan to try to use the Kurds to foment an internal rebellion.
While Netanyahu and top officials in the Mossad believed that, along with other moves which Trump vetoed, supporting a Kurdish internal insurgency could potentially radically alter the playing field, Binder and others viewed this move as possibly propping up the regime.
The majority of Iran — regime supporters and opposition — is Shi’ite.
Just as the Kurds often see the Iranian Shi’ites as outsider oppressors, many of the Shi’ites, even those who hate the regime, hate or distrust the Iranian Kurds even more.
In other words, Binder and others in the IDF high command worried that bringing the Kurds in as an officially Israel-US sponsored kingmaker could lead to the largest group of opposition Shi’ites changing sides back into the hands of the regime.
They also noted other major issues, such as that dropping lots of bombs makes protesting harder.
While some said that careful coordination could lead to enabling protests to grow by only bombing regime oppression forces, this never really occurred in a significant way, and most protesters were just too scared and stayed home.
Of those who did not stay home, Binder and the IDF high command would note that many of the bravest protesters were killed during the largest fight between the protesters and the regime over January 8-9 or were killed or tortured after the main war ended on April 7.
None of this means that Binder and the IDF have given up on regime change.
But they believe that it will take longer than some in the Mossad believe, and compared to Netanyahu’s promises, and that in the immediate short term it may even be difficult to make progress, with progress waiting for the medium term when protesters regain their daring.
Despite these truths, Binder and the IDF high command were highly optimistic about the jump in pressure on Iran in late August-early September, with the pace of economic deterioration jumping significantly.
They hope this elevated economic pressure will give the US the upper hand in the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear issue.
All of the talk about the US has also crystallized a realization from Israeli intelligence: instead of leaving the Middle East, Trump has put the American military on the front lines of managing most of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors.
With one brief 24-hour exception, Israel and Iran have not fought since April 7, whereas Washington and Tehran have been going at it at low-grade military levels sometimes for weeks on end.
The US is managing aspects of Israel’s conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas, and trying to encourage deconfliction and cooperation between Jerusalem and Damascus.
Lebanon
The UN has said that 360,000 Lebanese remain uprooted from their homes due to the war and the IDF security zone in southern Lebanon.
At the height of the invasion, over 1.1 million Lebanese had been uprooted.
The Post has learned that IDF intelligence estimates that around 500,000 Lebanese have still not returned to their homes, some because they cannot, and some out of fear of IDF forces nearby, or because of low-grade fighting between Hezbollah and the IDF.
This factor is the single largest pressure on Hezbollah to reduce its threat to Israel.
Despite Iranian attempts to protect Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Post learned, a little before it became public last week, that the IDF succeeded in a slow and grueling siege to defeat a sizable Hezbollah force that had been trapped in a standoff with the IDF at Ali Taher Ridge for months.
IDF intelligence correctly analyzed that while an overt and dramatic attack on Ali Taher Ridge might have given Iran an opening to attack Israel in support of Hezbollah, a quiet and gradual wearing down of those Hezbollah forces fell under the Iranians’ radar, or provided them with a face-saving outcome where they could look the other way.
Hezbollah’s FPV fiber cable drone threat is far from gone. But whenever Hezbollah has launched drones, the IDF has responded harshly, either striking a dozen Hezbollah targets or forcing another Shi’ite village to evacuate the area near where the drone launched from.
Binder and the IDF high command are skeptical that the Lebanese army will succeed in evacuating Hezbollah from southern Lebanon areas where it is still operating.
This could leave a standoff regarding how long the IDF remains in parts of southern Lebanon and regarding what conditions will be required of Lebanon-Hezbollah for ongoing partial withdrawals.
There is a similar standoff with Hamas in Gaza. However, even if no one expects Hamas to disappear, Binder and the IDF high command believe they have stronger cards to play versus Hamas given its weaker position.
Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey alliance
While much of the world has viewed the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-Turkey alliance as another move by Riyadh to try to deter Iran from striking it in the future, as it has in 2026, Binder and the IDF high command have specific Israeli concerns.
For example, what if Iran joins the alliance? Although it was built to deter the Islamic Republic, in the messy world of Middle East politics, both sides could decide that integrating Tehran could have advantages.
These advantages for the Saudis and Iran would likely be clear negatives for Israel and could even complicate aspects of relations with the US, if Washington gives critical nuclear and F-35 weapons technologies to Riyadh.
More generally, such an alliance could reduce Israeli influence in the region.
Though highly unlikely, there is even a slim chance that Egypt could join the alliance, which could undermine decades of close Jerusalem-Cairo military cooperation, as set down in the Camp David Accords.
Artificial intelligence revolution
Binder has mostly been known to the public for transforming IDF intelligence from its pre-October 7 state of "bubble thought" and complete reliance on technology to rebuilding human intelligence collection and elevating branches that question conventional wisdom.
However, he is also engineering a new AI revolution in IDF intelligence.
The key is not only using AI to perform data mining against targets, but also to shape human-AI agent relationships so that most or all IDF intelligence officials’ strategic and tactical visions broaden to see and predict big-picture trends before they happen.
In many ways, Binder and his IDF intelligence team have brought the agency back from the brink after October 7 to new highs, now and moving into the future.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
09/11/2026 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NY Post] 
