For three long years, Benjamin Netanyahu has led his country through its longest-ever, largest-ever war yet still managed to survive at the top of Israeli politics. The war defied every received wisdom of how long Israel can survive a multi-front conflict, socially, militarily and economically. It eroded any remaining reservations about the use of force in Israel, normalising extreme violence to an extent not seen before. And it accomplished tactical successes few would have thought possible: the assassination of the senior leadership of all of its opponents, including the head of government of its main regional rival; securing aerial domination of the territory of that regional rival, 70 times Israel’s size and thousands of miles away from its own airbases; and achieving overt military occupation of the territories of two neighbouring states, Lebanon and Syria, which has dramatically expanded the land area under Israeli control.
Netanyahu’s playbook on each front (with the exception of Syria) was remarkably consistent. The endgame of the war would be defined by a vague slogan – for example, “total victory” – accompanied by seemingly straightforward but actually implausible goals, such as the total disarmament of Hamas and Hezbollah, regime change in Iran, and/or the end of the latter’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programme. This would allow for an expansive, open-ended campaign, netting some accomplishments in the process – shoot for the moon, hit something – but making it difficult even for Netanyahu himself to determine a satisfactory end point and sell it back to his compatriots. Not that there is much evidence that he was seeking de-escalation or was planning to convert his tactical wins into strategic and diplomatic successes. Diplomatic overtures from Lebanon and Syria were ignored and then engaged in half-heartedly, and any suggestion of bringing the Palestinian Authority into the management of Gaza appeared to be a provocation.
Iran, in particular, with its significant conventional military forces (a new challenge to Israel, which has only fought paramilitary forces in the last 53 years) and its vaunted ballistic missiles arsenal – which could, theoretically, wipe out Israeli cities if Iran chose to empty the arsenal in one go – presented both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge was that Israel could not possibly hope to win such a conflict on its own. The opportunity was to resolve this by fulfilling Netanyahu’s lifelong ambition: goading the US into taking on Iran directly, a proposal he has floated to every American administration during his tenure.
Netanyahu gambled astutely on Donald Trump’s impatience with complex and protracted negotiations. Yet the prime minister appears to have underestimated Trump’s other character trait: the tendency to snap and change course – and to lose patience with a protracted and complex military campaign, too. Netanyahu drew the US into bombing Iran’s nuclear research sites in June 2025 and into joining a broad aerial campaign against the country this February. The next logical step would have been to get American boots on the ground – perhaps in support of a Kurdish uprising, and, once that failed to materialise, in the much-touted amphibious attack on Kharg Island, Iran’s heavily fortified oil processing site in the Persian Gulf.
Trump baulked, however, and the ensuing two months have been a deeply humbling lesson for both America and Israel on how to convert kinetic power into diplomatic leverage. For a moment, it seemed as if Netanyahu was on the cusp of accomplishing a 21st-century version of Greater Israel: undisputed regional dominance from the Mediterranean to South Asia, conducted from the air, with no need to stretch Israel’s armed forces across vast territories. Instead, as Israelis now begin to contemplate the reward for their country’s war efforts, sacrifices and transgression, the picture is bleak. Gaza might be in ruins, but Hamas is still in charge, and is likely to survive as a political – and paramilitary – movement as well. Hezbollah has been downgraded from the conventional army it has bloated into, but this merely allows it to return to its original shape – as a creative and dogged guerrilla movement, harassing Israeli occupying forces with targeted attacks by suicide drones. It’s already apparent that Israel’s latest occupation of southern Lebanon will end in a retreat as ignominious as the one in the 1990s.
Far from becoming mired in infighting – which may well have happened if Israel and the US had allowed Ali Khamenei to die of old age, precipitating a succession battle for supreme leader – the Iranian regime has instead emerged stronger and more stable at home than it has for years. It’s also a more powerful, proactive hegemonic force abroad thanks to the careful calibration of its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and, even more importantly, its exposure of the limits of American power, capital and determination. The US may not have squandered the billions of dollars and the lives it did on Iraq, but the impact of its much quicker defeat in Iran will likely be seen as significant a milestone in its decline.
For Israel, this means that a remote rival has become a very present threat, while a steadfast ally – not to say patron – has become a fickle and disinterested friend. The prospect of Israel being left to its own devices haunts many Israelis. The reaction to Trump’s winding down of the war on Iran has been split between visceral disenchantment with the president and attacks on Vice-President JD Vance, who has been openly dismissive of the US-Israel relationship. There is also some residual hope that Trump’s retreat was caused by the looming midterms this November and that, once those have passed, perhaps a new round of fighting can be instigated.
Such a scenario would require Netanyahu to win Israel’s next general election, which must take place by 26 October. Netanyahu, however, has been trailing in the polls almost invariably since 7 October 2023; elections held near the third anniversary of this catastrophe will do little to improve his chances. In one of the most recent polls, published on 25 June, Netanyahu’s Likud was forecast to remain the largest party with 24 seats, but the coalition bloc would still only be able to cobble together 53 seats – eight short of forming a government.
Netanyahu’s chances are further complicated by the fact that most of the opposition parties are organised not so much around politics or policies, but around the rejection of him personally. Then there’s the true wedge issue in Israeli politics: not the regional war or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the question of ultra-Orthodox Jews’ continued exemption from conscription – an exemption that Netanyahu has upheld in exchange for their political support. But polls suggest that the current coalition of his secular-right Likud with the far-right politicians Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich plus the ultra-Orthodox parties wouldn’t have enough seats to form the next government; and no centrist parties are likely to enter a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox. His only path to power, then, would be somehow to persuade parties organised around the loathing of Netanyahu to allow him to lead them as prime minister.
At the same time, it seems unlikely any of these parties will themselves be able to secure a majority without relying on at least one Palestinian-majority party, which every centrist leader has rejected doing – including Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. It is precisely this rejection that may yet give Netanyahu another opportunity. In recent weeks, centrists like Benny Gantz have begun throwing around a new phrase: “a broad, Zionist coalition” (another way of saying a Jewish-only coalition designed to lock the Arabs out of power). Netanyahu might yet be able to capitalise on the desire to lock out Israel’s most significant and maligned minorities – the Palestinians and the ultra-Orthodox – by spearheading a coalition made up of all secular Zionist parties, including his Likud party. Netanyahu could perhaps commit to ceding the premiership in favour of the next-largest party’s leader within a set timeline, as a sweetener.
If he succeeds, the prime minister will be able to launch the concluding act of his political career: completing the evisceration of Israel’s fracturing democracy, annexing at the very least parts of Gaza and the West Bank, and trying once again to fulfil his lifelong fixation on overthrowing the Iranian regime. Netanyahu has been written off countless times, but he has always managed to prove his political obituarists wrong. There has never been a more dangerous moment for them to repeat this mistake than now.
[Further reading: After Iran, America may turn on Israel]