As war with Iran rages, Netanyahu's political survival is once again secured
After striking Iran on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in just a matter of hours, went from having his coalition on the brink of collapse to almost all of the opposition politicians behind his 'Rising Lion' operation against Iran.
The turnaround is yet another example of how Mr Netanyahu almost always seems to survive.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, having only just finished an attempt to dissolve the parliament, said on X that Israel's operation was 'a necessity'. He did not once mention his criticisms of and efforts to topple the government since the inception of Mr Netanyahu's coalition.
The comments came shortly after Mr Lapid and other opposition members became the closest they had yet been to toppling Mr Netanyahu, following a coalition crisis over his ultra-Orthodox parties' anger at a lack of progress in passing a law to exempt their young men from service.
For days, it appeared they would leave the government and deprive the prime minister of his majority.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennet, a favourite for prime minister in the event of future elections and a fierce critic of Mr Netanyahu's efforts to exempt ultra-Orthodox military service, took to X after the Iran strikes began to say, with not one mention of Mr Netanyahu: 'Now we have finally hit the head of the octopus."
Sami Abu Shehadeh, one of the few Israeli politicians willing to criticise Mr Netanyahu at the moment and his Iran operation, told The National that the prime minister was 'trying to push the region into a huge war that nobody needs in order to keep his coalition'.
'Israel is a very militarised society. Whether in the opposition or coalition, politicians have had a career in the army. When there are security issues, they forget they are politicians and that they can and should criticise anything,' he added.
'They start behaving like any small soldier who gets an order. They do not think as free politicians who see the whole context and can put forward a different political programme.'
Another opposition politician and often controversial figure, Ayman Odeh, said that the timing of the attack on Iran is not a coincidence.
'I think that it really has to do with Netanyahu's inability to keep his coalition. He is leading us to this very dangerous war with the Iranians, dangerous for the Israelis, the Palestinians and to the whole Middle East, based on his very narrow political interests.'
A seasoned political survivor and Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Mr Netanyahu has weathered many crises.
Since October 2023, Mr Netanyahu's government has faced mounting unpopularity, with polls showing his coalition would not stand a chance in an election today. Public anger has surged over his refusal to take personal responsibility for the intelligence, military and policy failures that led to the 2023 Hamas attack, and for not doing enough to secure the return of hostages still held in Gaza.
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The National
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Trump warns Iran: US military will unleash 'full strength' if it attacks
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Middle East Eye
30 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
By allowing Israel to bomb Iran, Trump is pushing Tehran to go nuclear
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New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Who now will trust the word of America? Sooner or later, a power in decline like the US will find it needs the trust of others. True to form, Trump and his coterie have no inkling of what they have just done. They are gloating in the act of deceit they have just performed, laughing about duping Iranian diplomats while rushing hundreds of Hellfire missiles to the Israeli army and supplying it with real-time intelligence. Israel's drones caught their targets at home in bed or lured them to their headquarters, where they were wiped out. This is regarded in Tel Aviv and Washington as a coup. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington provided Israel with "exquisite intel". After bragging about their act of deception, Trump lectured Iranians to get back to the negotiating table or face even worse. "Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. This is the dumbest thing the US president could say to a nation 92 million-strong with thousands of years of history behind them. Yesterday Saddam, today Netanyahu It is even more stupid if you consider what Iran went through for eight years when it was attacked by the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with western support. It is this bitter experience, no less than the Islamic Republic's ideology, that has fashioned Iran's foreign policy. Its nuclear enrichment programme and its rocket arsenal were all burnished in the fire of the Iran-Iraq war. Like Netanyahu, the Iraqi dictator launched a war when he deemed his neighbour to be at its most vulnerable. On 22 September 1980, Iran's then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was still grappling with the post-revolutionary chaos. He did not have an army, much of which was dissolved when the Shah was toppled. These questions are often ignored in the Israel-Iran story. We asked a panel of experts Read More » Iran had a combination of regular forces and the newly formed, untested Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), but it was so short of weapons that they were passed from one soldier to another as they fell in waves on the front line. Saddam's forces initially made rapid advances, but they were slowly pushed back at a huge cost in lives. Like Netanyahu today, Saddam was supported by the US and Europe. He got the means to manufacture the chemical weapons from German companies, which provided the technology and precursor chemicals needed to manufacture mustard gas, sarin, tabun and other chemical agents. Western cover for Saddam continued even after the gassing of Kurds in Halabja. My late and much-missed colleague Richard Beeston of The Times recounted how two British diplomats attempted to persuade him that nothing really happened there. Three years into the war, late US President Ronald Reagan sent his then-bright young thing, Donald Rumsfeld, to shake hands with Saddam. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114 of 26 November 1983 stated the US objective. It only wanted to protect its military forces and its oil supplies in the Gulf. Saddam's chemical weapons were of no concern to Rumsfeld or Reagan. But an entire generation of Iranians will never forget those gas attacks from which veterans suffer to this day. Deep defence strategy And it was this bloody and savage war, which Iran eventually won, that forged the determination of Tehran to train and build a network of armed groups from the Mediterranean to its borders as a form of deep defence. Plainly, Iran's "axis of resistance" may be weaker today than it was two years ago. The senior leadership of the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, along with their homes and families, were mapped and selected for targets by Mossad long before the Hamas attack on 7 October. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah's leadership wanted to get into a full-blown war with Israel after the Hamas attack... Their moderation was interpreted by Netanyahu as weakness Some of that took place in Syria, where Hezbollah exposed its ranks to agents working for Israel in the Syrian and Russian military intelligence. But not all of it. The fact that Hezbollah is today unable to come to Iran's aid in the darkest hour of the mother ship is the clearest testimony to the defeat it suffered at Israel's hands. Its units on the border fought bravely and kept the elite Israeli commando units like the Golani Brigade pegged down to a few kilometres of the border. Nonetheless, the ceasefire it signed in November of last year signalled a defeat unlike anything it has suffered before. But by the same token, what has come to be viewed in Lebanon today as Hezbollah's and Iran's strategic mistakes - by not replying to Israel's attacks earlier and more forcibly, or by maintaining the belief that Hezbollah could achieve some sort of balance of power with Israel - could equally be read now as strategic restraint. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah leadership wanted to get into a full-blown war with Israel after the Hamas attack, and its leaders said so plainly. Their moderation was interpreted by Netanyahu as weakness. The lack of a heavy response by Iran was read as an encouragement to go for the jugular. Which is where we are now. A long war? Like Saddam in 1980 or Bush in 2003, Netanyahu is placing all his bets on a short war and an early capitulation by Iran. But unlike any war Israel has fought since 1973, Israeli warplanes are attacking a real army and a real state. Iran has strategic depth. It has its enrichment centrifuges buried half a mile underground at some of its five sites. It could close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 21 percent of the global petroleum liquids transit, within the blink of an eye. It also has powerful allies in Russia and China. Whether with a green light or grudging acceptance, Trump enters war with Iran Read More » The Ukrainians say that Russia has launched over 8,000 Iranian Shahed drones since the war broke out in February 2022. The time may soon come when the Iranian leadership asks Russia to return the favour by supplying it with S-400 air defence batteries, especially in light of statements by the Israeli army declaring its jets had operational freedom over the skies of western Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin already believes he is at war with the West, his relationship with Trump notwithstanding, and that MI6 was responsible for the Ukrainian attack on Russian long-range bombers. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, all but said as much. Putin's relationship with Netanyahu, which was once so close that the Israelis stopped the supply of Russian air defence systems to Iran, is shot to pieces. When a delegation from Hamas arrived in Moscow after the 7 October attacks, Putin passed a message of thanks for this "birthday gift", my sources tell me. Putin was born on the same day in 1952. Would Russia allow Israel, supplied by the US, to topple Iran after the loss of Bashar al-Assad in Syria? It's a question that Netanyahu and Trump should consider. Trump had a 50-minute talk with Putin over the weekend. Netanyahu should also consider what he would do if the war lasts more than two weeks and Iran does not wave the white flag. So should those Gulf states that spent $4.5 trillion on US arms contracts and bungs into Trump's own pockets, thinking they had dissuaded America from attacking Ansar Allah (the Houthi movement) in Yemen. The longer the war goes on, the greater the risk of the fire spreading throughout the supremely vulnerable oil and gas installations of the Gulf. Israel has just attacked Iran's installations at Fajr Jam Gas Refinery and South Pars gas field in Bushehr province. Iran replied by hitting the oil refineries around Haifa. Dragging the US into war In Israel itself, a mood of euphoria at having wiped out Iranian military and nuclear leadership has quickly dissipated, as Iran has inflicted on parts of central Israel the sort of destruction Israel has visited on Gaza and Lebanon. For the second night running, Israelis have been experiencing the sort of terror they have inflicted on their neighbours. They are quickly discovering what it is like to lose the impunity they have assumed was their birthright. Even if this war stops, the price of peace and the stabilisation of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme has just gone up If Israel continues to be battered by Iranian missiles night after night, Netanyahu will increasingly think of how he can get the US directly involved in the war. A false flag drone attack on a US base in Iraq would be a tempting option for Netanyahu and one which he has doubtless already considered. Trump so far has been putty in his hands. As far as the future of nuclear enrichment in Iran is concerned, Netanyahu and Trump's unilateral attack, if successful, will provide the biggest incentive Iran can possibly have to get a viable bomb as quickly as possible. The relative weakness of Tehran's conventional arms and its vulnerability to F-35s will provide the same logic to a battered Iran, as it did to Putin, who thought - at one stage in the war in Ukraine - he was on the verge of losing Crimea. He threatened to use a tactical nuclear missile, and Joe Biden's team took that threat seriously. If Trump and Netanyahu think they are dissuading Iran from getting a bomb by dismantling their conventional means of self-defence, they are sorely mistaken. Any nuclear strategist who has war-gamed these scenarios will tell you that the weaker and less reliable conventional forces are, the more reliant a nuclear power is on its nuclear bombs and the readier it is to use them as a weapon of first resort. There is no indication yet that this is the thinking of Iran's supreme leader or the government, but public opinion in Iran - even before the attack - is turning to a clear majority in favour of getting the bomb. Trump said the US would not tolerate a North Korea in the Gulf, but that is what he might achieve by allowing Israel to bomb Iran. Even if this war stops, the price of peace and the stabilisation of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme has just gone up. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Is the writing on the wall for Iran's ruling class?
This is a fateful moment for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Does it choose defiance and military brinkmanship? Or does it conclude that there is now no escaping a radical revision of its revolutionary doctrine built on a programme of nuclear power, regional expansionism and the strategic use of armed proxies? Strategic patience is no longer an option, nor is its years-long conflict of attrition with Israel. This is now a different kind of war between two extremist doctrines, Iranian and Israeli. This round of confrontation is not performative, unlike previous skirmishes, because the traditional tacit understanding between the two sides has collapsed – perhaps for the first time. A real war has erupted, one that both Iran and Israel have framed in existential terms. Israel has dramatically escalated its attacks, killing military and political leaders as well as nuclear scientists. It has achieved deep intelligence penetration inside Iran similar to its infiltration of Hezbollah's ranks in Lebanon last year. In doing so, Israel has goaded Tehran into retaliatory escalation. The resulting devastation of Israeli urban centres would rally overwhelming American and western support for Israel, no matter how Iran might brand such attacks as a triumph for itself. What are the horizons of this war? Could it prove decisive for both Iran and Israel? Let us imagine a scenario, however implausible, in which this war ends swiftly, after it reshuffles the negotiating cards in the US-Iran-Israel triangle, not only on nuclear matters but also by elevating the military stakes to force a permanent political settlement and co-existence between Iran and Israel. Imagine that the 'Deal of the Century' – which US President Donald Trump has set as a strategic goal since his first term – is now ripe for implementation under an American umbrella and with Iranian-Arab-Israeli understanding. Such a proposition is, of course, fundamentally incompatible with the existential logic of the Islamic Republic, whose doctrine includes Israel's destruction, becoming a nuclear state and relying on armed proxies. Realistically, however, the US has enabled Israel to degrade Iran's surrogates across the Middle East. Washington has provided Israel with both cover and intelligence for unprecedented operations inside the Islamic Republic in recent years. The encirclement of Iran is no passing development. It is part of a deliberate push to compel the ruling echelons in Tehran – from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – to choose between survival and collapse. All this explains why the war that erupted last Friday is no surprise. Israel has long signalled its readiness to launch major strikes against Iran. In parallel, Iran has conveyed to its allies that it, too, is at peak readiness to carry out retaliatory strikes, perhaps using the Ukraine model of saturation attacks – launching hundreds of drones and missiles in overwhelming blows similar to what Russia faced. Tehran calculated that such a warning would hold Mr Trump hostage to its deterrence, assuming that hitting Israeli cities would place a burden on a US President with little appetite for war. But Iran's bet failed. Israel made its move with US understanding anyway. Another miscalculation by Tehran was assuming that Mr Trump would fall into the trap of endless open-ended nuclear talks and that its tactical shrewdness would allow it to avoid any discussion of ballistic missiles or proxies. Europe, however, delivered a blow to this strategy, issuing a sharp censure of Iran's deception in its nuclear programme, its concealment of prohibited activities, and its evasion of the serious monitoring sought by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran also misread the decision by Mr Trump's envoy to the negotiations, Steve Witkoff, to limit talks to the nuclear programme, wrongly interpreting this as a green light to revive its proxies. Tehran did not pressurise the Houthis in Yemen to stand down. It also gave Hezbollah the impression that it was regaining strength through US negotiations, thereby emboldening the group to obstruct Beirut's efforts to assert Lebanese state sovereignty. Now that there is an actual war, Iran may yet activate all its armed proxies to overwhelm Israel, but this would be an enormous gamble. If any one of them targets US forces or bases, Washington will respond with overwhelming force. There are of course question marks over how much co-ordination there was between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's government and the Trump administration before the Friday strikes. Was there a view to mislead Iranian officials during the nuclear talks and secure Israel the element of surprise? Was Mr Trump opposed to the timing of the strikes, given the G7 and Nato summits are taking place over the next few days? But these speculations are irrelevant because of American strategic policy, set in motion two years ago by Mr Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden. In a nutshell, it is to delegate the mission of destroying Iran's capabilities to Israel while providing it with military and intelligence support to carry out the task. Regardless of whether Mr Trump is pleased or furious right now, he remains committed to this strategic doctrine. And so, even as Mr Trump issued ambivalent statements prior to Israel's strikes and Tehran's retaliation, he has now adopted a dual strategy of inducement and intimidation in his messaging towards Iran. He insists the door to diplomacy remains open, even as Tehran dismissed such a possibility for the foreseeable future. However, Tehran has been encircled. Its proxies are in the doldrums. Syria is no longer the open playground it once was for Iran's Revolutionary Guards, nor is the Iraqi government prepared to submit to Tehran's directives. The Houthis may fancy themselves to be the standard-bearers of the Axis of Resistance, yet the US and UK have drawn up plans to contain them. And Hezbollah has been severely debilitated. Moreover, the Israeli government has been canny and aggressive in how it has conducted strikes across the region, and even criminal in its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. Yet it's not going to be deterred, given US support. It remains to be seen whether or not this war will be prolonged and spiral into a regional conflict. Or whether there are those in Tehran reconsidering their options. Either way, more is yet to come.
