Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a press conference at the conclusion of the 12-day war against the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran.
He went into great detail about how the Israeli operation had removed “the existential threat of Iran”; how the serried ranks of Iranian nuclear scientists had been liquidated; how factories producing centrifuges had been pulverised “one after another”; how hundreds of ballistic missiles and a plethora of launchers had been eliminated; how the main isotopic enrichment facility at Natanz had been destroyed.
If that war had been so encompassing and conclusive, according to Netanyahu, why then was it necessary to implement Operation Roaring Lion this year on February 28?
Last week, the Minister of Defence Israel Katz explained to the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate that the imperative for the Iranian regime was “to rebuild the intelligence capability—not only rebuild it but expand it tenfold”.
He told Israel’s Channel 12 television that the IDF had planned Operation Roaring Lion to take place in mid-2026 but at the request of the Americans, it had been moved forward – and probably because of the mass demonstrations against the regime.
On the surface, this appears to be an American war which Israel will exploit to its own security benefit. One motive is that a dysfunctional White House wanted to contain China in a global sense. China purchased 80% of Iranian oil in 2025 at a time when its annual growth target has been lowered to its lowest level since 1991.
Despite Netanyahu’s triumphalist inconsistency, Iran commenced this war with 2,000 medium range ballistic missiles and over 6,000 short range ones, and there have been reports that China was rebuilding Iran’s missile and drone capability.
A limited poll last week indicates that Israeli citizens are united in the task of destroying Iranian missiles but divided over the quest for regime change. (Israel Democracy Institute 4 March 2026)
Some Israeli commentators, however, remained suspicious that the timing of the attack was also related to the 2026 Israeli election, scheduled to be held on October 27, and to boost Netanyahu’s chance of winning it. Trump has called President Herzog “a disgrace” because he would not give Netanyahu a pardon and annul the charges in his three court cases. Trump said that a pardon would allow Netanyahu to concentrate on the war with Iran. Herzog’s office responded by stating that “Israel is a sovereign state, governed by the rule of law”.
All politicians, of course, select the election day that is most favourable to their chances. Last year, opinion polls indicated that the 12-Day War had hardly any impact on the Likud’s standing. It was clear that while voters strongly supported the IDF, they did not extend their gratitude to Netanyahu. They remembered the disastrous security failure of October 7, 2023, and placed the responsibility for it at Netanyahu’s door. The electorate was not prepared to rehabilitate him.
With the start of Operation Roaring Lion, the initial but limited opinion polls suggest that the Likud has only advanced by a few seats but at the expense of the far-Right parties – and in particular, Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit. If these polls are to be believed, Netanyahu’s coalition is still unable to pass the mandatory figure of 61 seats to form a government. The opposition parties, however, are also unable to pass this threshold.
In a poll held last month, the Joint List of Arab parties was project to attain 15 seats – and thereby hold the balance of power in the next Knesset. In 2021, Mansour Abbas’s party, Ra’am, joined the government of Naftali Bennett. It secured a majority for the anti-Netanyahu camp and became the first Arab party to join a government of Israel.
If both the pro- and anti-Netanyahu coalitions do not have enough seats to pass the 61 threshold, then the Arab parties are much more likely to join the opposition, probably led by Naftali Bennett. They will seek greater rewards for their cooperation than did Mansour Abbas in 2021.
Netanyahu has previously been economical with the truth when it came to elections. In a closed meeting of the Likud, Netanyahu, like Trump, claimed that a previous election had been stolen from him.
“There was fraud on an enormous scale during the last election… if there hadn’t been fraud, we would have won 61 Knesset seats,” Reuters reported in June 2021.
On another occasion, Netanyahu republished on X a conspiracy article from Jacobin, a far-Left, little known, New York-based periodical. It claimed that Jeffrey Epstein had meddled in Israel’s elections. (Jacobin November 19, 2025)
Jacobin had republished Epstein’s exchanges with Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist in 2016, in recently released files. Epstein claimed credit for the political comeback of Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister. Barak had stood against Netanyahu in the second election of 2019.
This episode dovetailed with the growing fear by Israeli security officials that Iran had attempted to interfere in Israeli institutions and specifically in elections. Brigadier-General Yossi Karadi, the head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, noted recently that Iran had instigated “a thousand influence and propaganda campaigns” which had been identified online during the conflict in 2025.
Since October 7, the cyberespionage arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has vastly increased its cyber-output in an attempt to sow division and chaos in Israel through attempts to shut down basic services. At the beginning of this year, the Shin Bet and the Israel Central Elections Committee warned of Iranian threats to disrupt the 2026 election using cyberthreats and AI.
While Netanyahu will hope to use the Iran conflict to his domestic political advantage, he will be mindful of the fact that the Israeli public does not like long, drawn-out wars. Israelis start off by being overwhelmingly supportive but as time moves on, the patriotic euphoria wears off and support wanes dramatically. This happened recently with the recent Gaza war when over 60% of the population wanted a ceasefire by its latter stages.
During the disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, led by prime Minister Menahem Begin and Minister of Defence Ariel Sharon, a Modi’in Ezrachi poll at the outset indicated that 93.3% supported Operation Peace for Galilee. It diminished rapidly as the war unfurled. This pattern of initial support is being replicated today.
According to a classified report by the US National Intelligence Council last week, the Iranian regime is playing for time with seemingly no intention to capitulate. It is hoping that Netanyahu will overreach himself as he has done in the past. As Avrum Burg, the former Knesset Speaker, commented incisively: “Ideological regimes do not function like pyramids. They function like networks.”
No one knows what the outcome of this war will be or indeed the long-term effects of it, long after Trump has left the political stage. Will a state of constant war continue when 40% of Israeli homes have no safe room? What will be the economic and political price of the war? Will ordinary Americans blame Israel for the burdens of the war? Will there be terrorist attacks aimed at Diaspora Jews and their institutions?
One thing is certain. Netanyahu will try to weather all storms that 2026 will throw at him, to use the war and to cut corners to help him get re-elected for his fourth decade at Israel’s helm.
Jewish Independent 10 March 2026