Five Days Into War With Iran, Normalcy In Tel Aviv

Five Days Into War With Iran, Normalcy In Tel Aviv

From The Bureau Podcast by Sam Cooper

March 5, 2026 · 30 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the contrasting experiences of life in Tel Aviv during the war with Iran, highlighting a sense of normalcy amidst conflict.

The Bureau has been covering the war against Iran’s Islamic regime largely through American political and military sources — the strategic calculus, the intelligence assessments, the geopolitical reverberations reaching from Beijing to Moscow. But there is a different angle that comes from standing in a city under bombardment, and that is what Adam Zivo has been delivering from Tel Aviv. We last talked when he was in Israel during the 12-day war last June. He returned to Tel Aviv roughly a week before this current campaign began, because his sources — political and journalistic — told him that what was coming would be severe. What he has found since arriving is something that might surprise people who have never spent time in Israel, much less during a war. People at the beach. People at the cafes. An entire society that had made its psychological peace with the fact that conflict with an Islamic regime that has pledged to eradicate the state of Israel is inevitable, a matter of when, not if. Adam walks us through the first day of incoming bomb warnings, to an increasing sense of normalcy and expectation of complete military victory for Israel and the United States. What comes…

People in this episode

Host: Sam Cooper

Guest: Adam Zivo

Topics covered

  • war
  • Iran
  • Israel
  • geopolitics
  • normalcy
  • information war

Keywords

  • Iran
  • Israel
  • Tel Aviv
  • war
  • geopolitics
  • normalcy
  • information war
  • Adam Zivo

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Iran’s Islamic regime

Places: Tel Aviv, Israel, United States, Beijing, Moscow

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