Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

Writing in the New York Times, Roger Cohen argues that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been weakened due to five principal factors – the undermining of the supreme leader’s position, the breaking of the contract that bound society, the extension of fissures in the establishment, the inevitable weakening of Iran’s international rhetoric and the loss of a whole new generation due to the Revolution’s failure to adapt.

While it would perhaps be unwise to predict the future of Iran’s revolution, its interesting to note the similarity between Cohen’s final factor and Jared Diamond’s book: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive in which the author explains why societies disappear.

His main argument is that it is each society’s inability to adapt to a changing reality which ultimately causes its collapse.

Diamond’s book is part of the Reut Institute’s Canon as it emphasizes the importance of maintaining ‘relevancy’ in a constantly changing environment – something we aim to help decision makers do. According to Harvard Professor Ron Heiftez, such adaptation is carried out by successfully choosing which traditional values should be kept and which given up.

in Israel’s context, which values does the country need to adapt in order to maintain its ‘relevancy’ in the current geo-strategic climate?

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