True Measure of Success

This morning, many Israelis awoke in a funk. Saturday, March 21, was a difficult day. Since the fourth day of the war, Iran has still been managing to fire between 10-20 missiles a day at Israel. Out of the 400 or so missiles fired on Israel in this span, there have been 6 direct hits. Two of them happened yesterday. Both of them in the south of the country: One in the town of Arad and the other in the town of Dimona. In both cases, two interceptors were launched to shoot down the threats, and in both cases, they missed. Both Iranian missiles impacted populated neighborhoods. Arad and Dimona are 20 and 10 kilometers, respectively, from the Negev Nuclear Research Center (NNRC). According to public reports, the NNRC is the seat of Israel’s nuclear weapon program and could feasibly be designated as a military target. But as has been shown in the past, Iranian missiles are quite accurate, typically hitting within a few hundreds of meters from their target. The Iranians were not trying to hit the NNRC – they were trying to hit Israelis. And this time they succeeded. While the damage was considerable, miraculously, no one was killed. But the feeling remained: We are not invincible.

This was not their only recent success. Since the war began on February 28, Israel and the U.S. have essentially had complete air dominance over the skies of Iran. IAF and USAF jets fly to and from Iran daily and drop their munitions with pinpoint accuracy, slowly but surely decimating Iran. But last week, a clip went viral showing an Israeli F-16 firing flares. Flares are used to spoof heat-seeking missiles and are used if the aircrew believes that they are in imminent danger of being hit. The F-16 returned to base safely, but the feeling remained: We are not invincible.

And it didn’t end with Iran. This morning, we awoke to discover that two cars were hit by Hezbollah anti-tank missiles in the town of Misgav Am, on the Lebanese border. At least one person was killed. On October 8, 2023, the entire town of Misgav Am was evacuated for nearly two years because of the threat of Hezbollah invasion. Most of the residents have since returned. Do we have to send them away again? Didn’t the IDF destroy Hezbollah? So we thought, but the feeling remains: We are not invincible.

So once again, the question hangs in the air: Are we winning this war?

It is a deeply Israeli question – one asked not from arrogance, but from experience. Israelis know that wars do not unfold in straight lines. They move in waves. There are days of momentum and days of doubt. Days when the headlines reinforce confidence and days when a single missile, a single video, a single death breaks through our sense of control. But the honest answer is this: Yes, we are winning, and convincingly so.

No war in history has ever been completely victorious. There is no moment when the enemy taps out, the sky clears, and threats disappear. Even World War II ended with insurgencies, proxy conflicts, and unfinished business. The expectation of a war without pain, without losses, without frightening moments is not realism. It is fantasy. Winning a war does not mean that nothing bad happens. Winning a war means that the balance of power steadily moves in your favor. And this is exactly what is happening. Israel and the U.S. have won air dominance over Iran. Iran’s critical military infrastructure is being dismantled piecemeal, methodically, relentlessly. Iranian commanders are being killed faster than they can be replaced. Hezbollah has been pushed back, degraded, and forced into a reactive crouch. Hamas is a shell of what it once was. Their ability to coordinate, resupply, and deter is collapsing.

By every military measure that actually matters – freedom of action, attrition of enemy capabilities, intelligence penetration, operational initiative – Israel and the United States are ahead. The enemy knows this. That is why their definition of victory is so thin. Iran and its proxies declare “victory” each day they remain alive. Each missile fired becomes proof of success. Each surviving launcher is framed as resilience. Survival itself is sold as triumph. That is not strength. That is desperation and religious dogma. When your strategic objective shrinks to mere existence, it means you have already lost the larger war. Iran cannot defeat Israel militarily. It cannot break Israeli society. It cannot dislodge the U.S. from the region. What it can do, and what it is trying desperately to do, is exhaust us psychologically.

That is why Israelis keep asking whether we are winning. And that is why the most important weapon we now possess is not Iron dome or a F-35 squadron, but patience and endurance. Staying the course requires courage. Not the courage of the battlefield, but the harder courage of restraint: the ability to absorb bad days without rewriting strategy; to mourn losses without declaring failure; to understand that progress in war is measured over months, not mornings. Unless it can demonstrate that our strategy is flawed – not emotionally painful, not morally complex, but strategically wrong –  the correct response is not panic, not despair, and not endless self-doubt. It is discipline.

Israel is not fighting this war for applause or for perfect optics. It is fighting because the alternative is something far worse. History is not kind to countries that quit wars halfway because victory proved uncomfortable. We are the good guys. Not because we claim it, but because our aims are limited, defensive, and rooted in the protection of life, even as our enemies celebrate death. We do not measure success in propaganda clips or viral slogans. We measure it in the steady erosion of those who seek our destruction.

This war will not end with a parade. It will end the way most necessary wars end: quietly, unevenly, with arguments about whether it was worth it. But one day soon, Iran’s proxies will be weaker, poorer, fragmented, and strategically contained. Israel will still be here. Stronger. Safer. And having done what it had to do.

Winning does not always feel like winning while it’s happening. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Good things,

Ari Sacher