By Paula Bernabéu
Jerusalem, Mar 10 (EFE).- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched the most significant military escalation yet against Iran following his promise to reshape the Middle East in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
With elections approaching, the war may also become a defining test of his leadership at home.
The conflict with Iran represents the culmination of more than two years of Israeli military operations across the region, including in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, with strong backing from the United States.
Netanyahu has long described Iran as “the head of the octopus” coordinating allied militias hostile to Israel throughout the Middle East.
“Without a doubt, Netanyahu will try to convince Israelis that they should vote for him again because he has finally succeeded in challenging and attacking the Iranian regime,” political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin told EFE in a phone call that was interrupted when an Iranian missile attack forced her to seek shelter.
Overwhelming support for the war
Public backing for the escalation appears strong in Israel. According to a survey conducted during the war by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), 93 percent of the Jewish population supports the military campaign, with broad support across the political spectrum.
“Israelis across the political map feel that the country faces an existential threat,” said Lior Yohanami, one of the study’s authors. “It does not vary significantly between the right, the center or the left.”
For Mairav Zonszein, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, many Israelis have grown increasingly skeptical of diplomacy.
“They believe that war is the only thing preventing the threat from continuing to grow,” she said in audio messages sent during the conflict.
The trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks and subsequent fighting across multiple fronts, from Lebanon to Yemen and Iran, has reinforced a widespread sense of vulnerability, she added.
Skepticism about a boost for Netanyahu
Despite the broad consensus behind the war effort, analysts question whether the conflict will significantly improve Netanyahu’s political standing ahead of elections.
A poll published by the Hebrew-language outlet Zman Israel gives Netanyahu’s Likud party 31 seats in the 120-member Knesset in elections scheduled for October. That would represent a modest gain from the 27 seats projected before the escalation with Iran.
Even so, it would still fall short of the 32 seats Likud currently holds, and Netanyahu’s coalition would reach only 53 seats, well below the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority.
Israeli media outlets such as Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth have reported that senior Likud officials are considering bringing elections forward to early summer if the military campaign against Iran and Hezbollah is perceived as successful.
However, Yohanami believes entrenched opinions about Netanyahu are unlikely to shift dramatically.
“The public’s view of him is already quite settled,” he said, pointing to controversies surrounding the prime minister, including the corruption charges he faces in court and the judicial reform initiative that sparked mass protests before the Oct. 7 attack.
“All of that is not going to change simply because of a successful military operation,” he said.
A successful military operation?
The Israeli military has highlighted what it describes as significant operational successes, including the killing of dozens of high-level targets during the first strike on Tehran on Feb. 28.
Among those killed was Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an event Israeli officials described as having “cut off the head of the octopus” behind regional militias hostile to Israel.
Khamenei joins a list of leaders aligned with Iran who have been killed in Israeli operations in recent years, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and senior Hamas figures Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, as well as Houthi commander Muhammad al-Ghamari in Yemen.
Scheindlin believes Netanyahu will also emphasize the United States’ involvement in the conflict as “an extraordinary diplomatic achievement,” reinforcing his image as Israel’s most capable statesman.
Yet Zonszein warns that the outcome of the war remains uncertain.
“Netanyahu promised total victory over Hamas in Gaza, and we see that none of that has happened,” she said, referring to the continued presence of the militant group after more than two years of fighting.
“And that was against a relatively small non-state actor. In Iran, they are promising something far bigger, the collapse of a regime,” she added. “It is still not clear how this war will end.”
Iran on Sunday named Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late supreme leader, as the new head of the Islamic Republic.
On the same day, Israeli media cited senior military officials as saying the army now expects a “slow collapse” of the Iranian regime once the war ends.
“The Middle East has certainly changed,” Scheindlin said. “But not necessarily for the better.” EFE
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