Netanyahu is caught between hitting Iran and heeding allies

“It’s not about Netanyahu,” says Yoel Esteron, publisher of the business daily Calcalist and a harsh critic of his. “The divide between those who say we have to do something isn’t really political anymore. I am hearing people who are definitely on the left saying we can’t tolerate hundreds of missiles without responding, and generals eager to show their manhood saying, ‘Wait a minute, let’s stop.’”

Those who know Netanyahu well say that this is a hinge moment for him for several reasons. Iran has been the core of his strategic concerns for decades. When the U.S. went to war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq again in 2003, he was arguing that the real threat was Iran.

Second, the failure of Oct. 7 will determine his legacy unless he can turn the current moment into a reversal and reshape Israel’s security position. As a result, they say, he’s taking his time deciding what to do next.

Israel has faced harsh criticism by its allies for its war on Hamas in Gaza. That war, spurred when Hamas operatives swarmed into Israel last October, killing 1200 and kidnapping 250, has killed 33,000, according to Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union. Whole neighborhoods have been leveled in Israel’s attempt to root out Hamas fighters in tunnels. Hunger is rampant.

So the warm embrace of those same governments now, vowing to punish Iran with sanctions, has been comforting. “We need the hugs,” Esteron said. “It’s nice, but nobody knows how it will affect the thinking of the Iranians. We’re on the horns of a dilemma.”

It’s not a new dilemma. Golda Meir, who was prime minister in the early 1970s, famously said, “If we have to choose between dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”

Apart from Iran, Israel has Hamas fighters still entrenched in Gaza holding scores of its hostages. It’s also facing daily battles in its north with Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy. And many Israelis would rather deal with those conflicts than take on Iran just now.

“One thing Israel realized on October 7 is that what we think of as ‘deterred’ is not necessarily so,” said Menahem Merhavy, a researcher on Iran at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute. “Hamas was not deterred; Hezbollah is not deterred. We still have Gaza on our plate and the hostages and the north. That’s where we need to put our focus now.”

Jonathan Conricus, a former military spokesman for Israel, now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says that no matter what Israel will directly hit Iranian soil. “The minimum would be to strike Iran hard enough to cause them to pause and think many times again before doing this again,” he said.

—With assistance from Henry Meyer.