As the right-wing coalition that oversaw massacres in Gaza, launched attacks across the region and eroded civil liberties in the country appears to be losing its grip on power by the day, interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly desperate efforts to derail the political transition signal growing desperation to remain in power.
That effort appears to include an attempt to reignite war with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the Israeli military to prepare for war ahead of a possible attack on Iran, ignoring the rebels’ calls for restraint.
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The report follows revelations that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been calling US President Donald Trump almost every day, urging him to resume attacks on Iran. Israeli media also reported repeated confrontations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military commander Eyal Zamir, who has resisted proposals for military action against Iran, warning that it could spark a wider conflict.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot is tasked with forming a viable government, but that is not a foregone conclusion. Prime Minister Netanyahu is either pushing to form a national unity government that includes himself and his Likud party, or waiting for Eisenkot’s defeat to call new elections.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is hopeless,” said Aaron Bregman, an Israeli political analyst at King’s College London. “He knows, and you can see that from his actions, that he is likely politically doomed and that only a united government can save him.”
“A small war could force the Eisenkot Company to form such a government in a crisis,” he said, referring to the rebels and their leader Gadi Eisenkot.
cynical obedience
Many opposition figures, including Eisenkot himself, accuse Netanyahu of trying to drag the country into a potentially devastating war for his own political survival, or of deliberately stalling the coalition-building process in the hope of forcing new elections when time runs out.
But while critics see Netanyahu’s attempt to reignite war with Iran as a cynical attempt to stay in power, analysts suggest even his fiercest opponents could rally to his support if he goes on the offensive.
“It’s a paradox,” said Hagai Ram, a professor at Ben-Gurion University and author of “Iranophobia,” a book detailing Israel’s longstanding hostility toward Iran. “We all know it’s a set-up, but the hysteria around Iran cuts through everything. If Prime Minister Netanyahu succeeds and starts a war with Iran, then of course the opposition will support it, and the people will expect it. I’ll admit they’re cynical, but this is Iran. This is the great enemy.”
“For former rebels, confronting Iran was something they had been training for their entire lives. For the public, they have been informed about the Iranian threat for years, and many already think war is inevitable.”
price worth paying
The decades-long cold war between Israel and Iran has been unrelenting for most of the Israeli people’s lives. Israelis have been under threat of attack from Iran’s regional allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, for decades. Hezbollah’s rhetoric threatening Israel’s destruction has been widely reported in Israeli media.
That concern was reinforced by repeated warnings by Israeli leaders dating back to at least the 1990s that Tehran was on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons and was likely to use them against Israel.
After the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, tensions came to a head as Israel launched multiple wars across the region. A 12-day exchange of attacks with Iran in June 2025 was followed by joint strikes with the United States in February that severed some of the world’s vital waterways, threw financial markets into turmoil and affected household spending in much of the world.
Nevertheless, a new war with Iran may offer Netanyahu a way out of the political bind he finds himself in, suggested Daniel Bartal, a political psychologist at Tel Aviv University.
As it stands, the majority of the population opposes him and his coalition, and in Bartal’s framework, he is “fighting for his life” and multiple criminal cases are underway against him.
Although Bartal doubted that Trump, Israel’s main ally and military backer, would allow Netanyahu to derail negotiations between the United States and Iran, he believed that Israelis would still “support such a war, and this would be the good card Netanyahu needs to get out of his current predicament.”
For now, Lam said, Israel maintains a state of perpetual hope for many.
“People know that any war allegations can be fabricated,” he said. “They’re not stupid and they take it for what it is. But a lot of people, including some of my friends and students, think it’s inevitable. They’ll just wait and when it happens, even though they know everything, they’ll still go on a mission and do what they’re ordered to do.”
