A resumed offensive must have a clear goal to justify it.
A resumed offensive must have a clear goal to justify it.
I srael’s election is the decisive electoral contest that will define international politics for the coming year, given the likelihood of limited-to-catastrophic Republican setbacks after the midterms. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, likely to survive in some form given his opponents’ ineptitude, has gained a fresh window of opportunity for a move against Iran. But American policymakers should only endorse this adventure if there is a clear path to victory, defined in either broad or narrow terms. Otherwise, they should direct their Israeli partners to focus their efforts elsewhere, solidifying the coalition of regional powers against Iran.
Israelis went to the polls this week and delivered the result that any rational observer of the Jewish state’s politics could have expected. Netanyahu’s Likud lost nine seats, while his preelection bloc of Haredi and Religious Zionist parties fell to 53 seats, short of a 61-seat majority. However, Likud remains the largest party in Israel’s Knesset. And crucially, Netanyahu’s opponents — Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid — are boxed into a corner. Eisenkot, Bennett, and Lapid hold a combined 48 seats, assuming Avigdor Lieberman joins their coalition. But this coalition cannot win a majority. An alliance between these centrist and left-wing parties, particularly Lieberman’s secular Yisrael Beiteinu, and the Haredi or Religious Zionist parties is impossible. It would create contradictions over Ultra-Orthodox conscription and a broader religious outlook that preclude a government.
Alternatively, Eisenkot could reach out to the Arab parties, which collectively won 19 seats. Yet Eisenkot already foreswore this option in his campaign, particularly given that the Arab parties refuse to label Hamas as a terrorist organization. Previously, Bennett and Lapid had formed a government with formerly Islamist Ra’am, which rapidly soured and has electoral repercussions to this day. Netanyahu, master of Israeli electoral machinations, can sit back and await a defection to his camp — without one, Israel’s hung parliament will trigger another election by next summer.
In the interim, Netanyahu remains in power. Despite his unwillingness to take direct blame for the October 7 intelligence failure, enough Israeli voters saw his wartime leadership as better than the alternatives to keep him in blocking position.
Now 77, Netanyahu is a man with a world-historical sense of purpose. Yet this purpose is shared across the Israeli political spectrum. There are few Israelis who have actually opposed the operations against Iran over the past two years, even if there has been significant bureaucratic and political recrimination after the first April U.S.–Iran cease-fire. Iran poses an existential threat to Israel on an ideological level. Iran must be fought once again, and the Islamic Republic destroyed.
The question for Israelis is not whether resumed war with Iran is prudent, but whether resumed war with Iran in the next six months can achieve a realistic strategic objective. The mistake of the war this spring was to seek expansive objectives, rather than to stage a series of strikes that would appreciably damage the regime, while allowing Israel to terminate operations when America dictated as much. Indeed, the reality of this war is President Trump, not Netanyahu, determines when the fighting begins — albeit not when it ends.
Trump’s relatively short attention span, reinforced by his management style, militates against long-term patient strategic planning. Trump quite clearly thinks in two- to four-week cycles. This explains his attempt to bring gas prices down through a cosmetic, ineffectual diesel deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in mid-October, just under a month before a probable midterm defeat. The result has been vacillation between intense pressure on Iran, negotiations, and pseudo-pressure masking desired disengagement. The Trump administration, however, is clearly contemplating a new round of strikes against Iran, as indicated by meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine and leaked planning discussions with CENTCOM Commander Brad Cooper.
The issue is the objective. Israel, with Netanyahu at the helm, will certainly be interested in resuming an offensive, but that offensive must have a clear goal to justify it. The United States and Israel can once again hammer Iranian missile and drone-launch capabilities and production facilities. They can also attack industrial targets across Iran, further undermining the country’s already battered economy. More limited strikes, including repeated ones, against Iran’s coastal missile launch sites and sensors are also justified.
Nonetheless, without fomenting an uprising or leveraging forces on Iran’s border, neither Israel nor the United States can base its immediate policy upon the collapse of the Islamic Republic, even if the Revolutionary Guard could lose its grip on power as rapidly as the Soviets did.
This does not mean, however, that pressure on Iran is fruitless. Instead, the United States can direct Israeli attention elsewhere, leveraging Israel’s capacity to solidify the anti-Iranian coalition that the U.S. sought to bring into existence under the first Trump administration.
This coalition relies on alignment between Israel and the Gulf States, not simply the United Arab Emirates. Emirati leaders, much like their Jordanian counterparts, appear to have realized that friendship with Israel is an asset in an otherwise volatile region and that Israeli military capabilities can, in fact, be leveraged in dangerous situations. But the Emiratis are only one part of the equation. The Saudis are the other. Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman has refused to move toward normalization with Israel absent dramatic concessions from Jerusalem and Washington, including over Saudi nuclearization. He has also refused to allow the U.S. to stage strikes from Saudi bases and constantly balked at even limited bombing campaigns against Iranian coastal targets.
Riyadh, however, is open to pressure. The Houthis are applying it liberally, embarrassing the Saudis day after day by demonstrating the kingdom’s ineffectual military capabilities. Saudi Arabia clearly wants someone else to solve the Houthi problem for it. The price for this resolution must be a more stable, structured relationship with the UAE and Israel and a long-term commitment to containing Iran. The Saudis, of course, will strongly resist the exposure this generates to their oil production facilities. The only way to counterbalance this risk is through American airpower — and potentially Israeli as well — both striking targets inside Iran during rounds of more limited escalation.
Iran aims to destroy Israel, force the U.S. from the region, and ultimately become a genuine threat to the U.S. through possession of nuclear weapons and ICBMs. Israel and the U.S.’s goal should be to destroy the Iranian regime. The past eight months show that patience is required. If we haven’t learned this, we haven’t learned anything.