Now, Israel's conscripted military is no more, if it ever was, the so-called worst, most moral armed force and the country's primary social cohesion tool.

Decades of religious ultra-nationalisms march through the institutions.

a phrase coined by 1960s German left-wing student leader Rudi Dutschke, have turned the military, long Israel's preeminent secular institution, not only into the militant spearhead of a policy to disenfranchise Palestinians, but also into a misogynist institution that deepens fault lines between Israel's secular and religious communities.

Militant religious sentiment in the military, or what civil-military relations scholar Yogi Levy calls theocratization of the armed forces and the creation of a theocratic military culture, recently prompted an exasperated conscript combat soldier on Israel's northern front with Lebanon to tell his father, this organization hates secular Jews.

Religious alternationalists believe their march will ensure that the military does not enable an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, as it did in Gaza when it destroyed settlements and forcibly removed settlers as part of Israel's 2005 pullback from the Strip.

The conscripts' despairing assessment came 15 years after a senior officer in the military's personal directorate noted that Jewish identity in the armed forces was changing.

The officer argued that the military had long adhered publicly to religious rules while allowing soldiers to do what they want in private.

There is much Israel could learn from NATO's newly enunciated defense strategy, James.

Has it accelerated changes that were already taking place? What's your sense of how power has shifted since the start? It

certainly has accelerated.

There's no doubt about it.

I think what it's done is it's given greater urgency to the need to diversify international relations, to diversify military relations, to try and build in a certain degree of self-sufficiency or ability to defend oneself rather than rely on the United States.

Now, to be fair, this is no different from what is happening in Europe.

And in transatlantic relationships, where the United States remains first among equals, if you wish, but nonetheless, the drive to be more capable of defending one's own interests militarily and otherwise, rather than relying on big brothers.

I think that's what you're seeing in the Middle East at the same time.

Just sketch those, please, for Australians, will you?

Why has Sudan been strategically important to Turkey in the first place, particularly given its location on the Red Sea?

Well, Sudan has a longstanding relationship with Turkey, and it's been a longstanding strategic relationship.

there was a very close relationship, uh, when Omar al-Bashir was still president before he was overthrown in a popular revolt.

And in fact, until today, prominent figures, including a former head of Sudanese intelligence who were part of the regime of Omar al-Bashir are still resident in, uh, in Turkey, or at least frequent Turkey very often.

Um, But over and beyond that, the relationship with Sudan, certainly the current relationship, is part of a far broader strategy.

Sudan, there are Turkish advisors in Sudan advising the Sudanese Armed Forces of General Burhan.

Turkey has a military presence in Somalia, which is its largest overseas military base.

My final question to you is, what does Turkey ultimately want? Looking ahead, if the war eventually produces a political settlement, what role could Turkey realistically play in Sudan's reconstruction and political future? And ultimately, is Ankara seeking to be a mediator, a strategic partner or a regional power pursuing its own geopolitical interests? And can Turkey realistically be all three at the same time?

assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq, Could this turn into a regional war?

I think we're very close.

Now, having said that, there is no military solution to this conflict, at least not at a price that is acceptable to any of the two parties.

And so what the next round of fighting is designed to achieve is really, on both parts, the hope that that's going to force the other party's hand.

With other words, the Americans hope that another round of fighting, which they... which they don't necessarily want, but for all practical purpose being forced into, that that will lead to a softening of the Iranian position, and vice versa, the Iranians think the same versus Donald Trump.

Neither is going to bring us any closer.

The gap between the two parties is extremely wide, and if anything, it's widening.

So how much of a threat is the latest activity around the strait to global energy supplies?

How is this battle going? And it's a relation to, of course, the new world order.

Indeed, at stake in the battle for the strait is far more than the question of whether Iran will have a stranglehold over the flow of 20% of the world's energy trade through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and with it, over Gulf economy.

Potentially, it is also a battle for control of the terms of the global energy trade, energy security, the Middle East's future security architecture, and the region's political map.

The stakes become clearer the longer the battle continues.

The more it expands beyond the strait to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, and the Bab al-Mandib waterway, and the more it threatens to suck others into a broadening regional conflagration.

Beyond control of the Strait of Hormuz and increasing the Bab al-Mandab, the stakes include determining the currency in which a significant chunk of Gulf and Iran-related energy trade would be conducted, the diversification of the export routes for Middle East oil, and the place of Israel and Iran's non-state allies, like Yemen's Houthi rebels, in the region's future architecture.

There were talks of negotiation, but the reality is that currently it's far from far from anything which is de-escalative.

The Houthis see escalating tensions with the kingdom as a way of increasing their leverage in stalled negotiations with Saudi Arabia by capitalizing on Crown Prince Bin Salman's efforts to contain the damage to his social and economic transformation of the kingdom caused by the war with Iran.