Final Word from Thursday, March 19, 2026

Pres. Petr Pavel and Foreign Min. Petr Macinka can't agree on the issue of Filip Turek as environment minister, but they do agree on the war in Iran. Pavel told Czech TV on March 8 that the attack by the U.S. and Israel was "justified by what the Iranian regime is or was and everything negative it supported in the region." Macinka echoed this yesterday, telling ČT, "I think this operation is important given the nature of the Iranian regime." This opens a potential avenue for collaboration between the Castle and the foreign ministry, which otherwise aren't communicating much. Ex-National Security Adviser Tomáš Pojar, who helped coordinate the munitions program for Ukraine, said at a security conference in Texas last week that the battlefields of Ukraine and Iran show that war is now a combination of traditional low-tech weaponry and super-tech systems. This requires having the flexibility to combine the old with the new, he said. In theory, the Czechs could use their expertise from the munitions program to help the U.S. when it starts running out of interceptors and other weapons, but it would of course mean getting knee-deep in another war. [ Czech Republic Donald United States Resilience in Security and Economics Dialogue Austin TX ammunition ]