Benjamin Netanyahu has spent much of his political life trying to make war with Iran seem not only inevitable but overdue. Thus, for the Israeli prime minister, the latest conflict was a victory the moment it began. Not because every consequence is good for Israel, but because he can sell almost every conceivable result as proof that he was right all along: that Iran had to be confronted, that force was unavoidable and that delay would only have made the threat more treacherous.
Mr. Netanyahu does not need a clean victory — he just needs a durable narrative. This is not just about distracting Israeli voters when they head to the polls this year. This is also about cementing an Israeli national security doctrine that always trumps diplomacy. He needs Israelis talking about Tehran rather than Oct. 7, about existential enemies rather than political accountability or the unresolved disaster in Gaza — where, after nearly two and a half years of indiscriminate destruction, Hamas still remains — or the crisis in Lebanon, where the renewed conflict with Hezbollah shows no signs of waning.
A war with Iran does not erase those failures, but it does slide them into the background. It also moves the political conversation back onto emotional and political terrain where Mr. Netanyahu has always felt strongest: using fear with the claim that only he truly grasps the scale of the threat to Israel from Iran, and the (empty) promise that he can remove it through force.
For all these reasons, any day-after scenario is a win for Mr. Netanyahu. If Iran capitulates under military pressure, he can say that force succeeded where diplomacy failed. If Iran refuses but emerges militarily weaker, he can say that Israel bought time by degrading the country’s nuclear and missile capabilities. If the Iranian government survives but is bloodied, isolated and more consumed by internal tensions, he can claim that he has neutered an implacable foe. A prolonged period of chaos and bloodshed in Iran could be cast in Jerusalem not as a tragedy that might have been prevented but as a problem to be managed from afar. Even a hardened Iranian regime can work into the narrative that the country must continue to be confronted.
Even as Iran appears to be strategizing for a prolonged war — and with it a steady trickle of Iranian missiles fired on Israel with no end in sight — Mr. Netanyahu will likely argue that hiding in bunkers and keeping our children out of school is a necessary price. And, unlike in previous iterations of this conflict, there is no longer anyone in power to tell him he’s wrong.
Back in 2010 and 2011, when Mr. Netanyahu weighed striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel’s security chief and top government advisers pushed back. They argued that the Israel Defense Forces were not prepared for such a strike and that it could undo the progress Israel had made in its covert campaign.
Fifteen years later, there are no longer dissenting voices present in Israel’s military or government, because Mr. Netanyahu has surrounded himself with loyalists and ideological politicians. And, in Washington, there is a trigger-happy president. Mr. Netanyahu thus got what he wanted: a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign led by a willing White House, beginning with the spectacle of the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Launching a war against Iran last June helped lay the groundwork. Israel’s initial — and operationally impressive — intelligence and military success seems to have persuaded President Trump to join in and strike Iran’s key nuclear facilities with massive “bunker buster” bombs. Eight months later, it is clear that Mr. Netanyahu did not want Mr. Trump to take the first exit ramp and leave the job unfinished.
In the months before the Feb. 28 strikes that began the current war, Mr. Netanyahu held two meetings with the American president, and in February, Israel’s chief of staff secretly flew to Washington. At Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Netanyahu reportedly highlighted the threat that Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities pose for both Israel and U.S. assets in the Gulf, capabilities which are on display now. After the protests in Iran in January, it seems apparent that Mr. Netanyahu contributed to moving the goal posts for a renewed war, shifting the conversation from a nuclear deal to ballistic missiles and regime destabilization.
There is a temptation, especially in Washington, to imagine a neat political endgame in Tehran: a decapitated leadership, a pliant successor, a chastened state still standing. But the so-called Venezuela model is not a serious template for Iran. Iran is larger, and its regime is more entrenched and more ideological.
The longer-term costs for Israel are not incidental, either. They go to the heart of the question that has animated Israeli politics for decades: whether or not military dominance in the Middle East can actually be converted into lasting security. An Israel that emerges from this war looking militarily unrivaled may also emerge even more politically isolated. A dominant power does not only deter; it also concentrates resentment.
The risks of that resentment extend far beyond the Middle East. Even before the current war on Iran, which most Americans oppose, U.S. public opinion had shifted dramatically on Israel. A Gallup poll found last month that Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis, by 41 percent to 36 percent, a striking reversal from recent years. There is also broader erosion in support for Israel and for American military aid to the Jewish state. If this war produces more civilian catastrophes in Iran or mounting military casualties and financial costs for the United States, that will likely further deteriorate the relationship.
An atmosphere of anger and blame against Israel also runs the risk of morphing into conspiratorial and antisemitic narratives about Jewish and Israeli power. That concern has grown higher with the American media’s preoccupation with the question of whether Israel pushed the United States into this war, and after comments made by U.S. officials indicating that the American reasoning for entering the war was related to Israel’s intentions.
There is yet another danger that Israeli leaders are less willing to state openly, one that has to do with the long-term human consequences of the war — for Iranians, of course, but also for Israelis. Israel’s National Security Council has already warned that terrorist elements affiliated with Tehran are seeking to harm Israelis abroad, and Israeli authorities have increased security at embassies and in places where Israelis and Jews congregate. States can absorb strategic shocks; civilians can become casualties of the afterlife of wars in train stations, synagogues, airports and restaurants when terrorist cells or individuals choose softer targets for revenge. That phenomenon has already begun as a result of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
And yet, none of this means that Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli state apparatus cannot claim success. On the contrary, that is precisely the problem. They have maneuvered into a political position in which, at least for the moment, declaring success no longer requires a stable peace, or even a more secure Israeli future. It requires only that Israel continue what analysts call “mowing the grass” — its repeated actions to degrade adversaries’ capabilities — and that no one in the Israeli establishment propose any alternative strategic vision.
Israel, having demonstrated overwhelming force, is once again mistaking domination for security and tactical escalation for a sustainable regional order — even as the region continues to burn.
Mairav Zonszein is a contributing Opinion writer. She is the senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to conflict prevention. She lives in Tel Aviv.
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