Gabriel Colodro argues [1] that the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro by US forces did more than topple a headline—it rattled the old “rules” that once kept sovereignty and regime change behind a thick wall of diplomatic caution. In conversations with Israeli officials and analysts, he traces a world where Washington is showing a greater willingness to use force to set limits, and where Israel sees both strategic room to maneuver and a new set of political costs.
“The Americans are rewriting the rules of the game,” Yossi Kuperwasser told The Media Line, framing the shift as a rejection of an order that, in his view, let aggressive regimes operate with near immunity while punishing states prepared to act. Yet he also warns that removing a leader does not automatically replace the system that sustained him, and that disruption without a workable alternative can breed instability.
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Knesset member Moshe Tur-Paz offers a more cautious optimism. “I do think there are opportunities opening all the time,” he said. “There’s a great opportunity here.” He points to the US posture under President Donald Trump and close US-Israel coordination as developments that would have seemed far less likely under the previous assumptions of restraint.
Both men tie the breakdown of the old order to Oct. 7. “It gave us an unbelievable example of what happens if you stick to the old rules,” Kuperwasser said, arguing that patience and deterrence failed when Hamas built capabilities unchecked. Gaza, he adds, has become a proving ground for the new approach. “The American military presence is there in order to enable implementing the Trump plan,” he said, stressing that Israel’s limits flow from its own commitment to that framework: “We are working according to the plan we endorsed.”
Iran, in this telling, is the most uncertain test. Kuperwasser pegs regime-collapse odds at 15% to 20%—higher than before, still far from inevitable—while Tur-Paz stresses change must come from within. Colodro closes the loop on a world where consensus is fading, power is back, and Israel is both beneficiary and test case. Read the full piece [1] for the sharper edges of that argument, as Gabriel Colodro lays them out.