What Will Netanyahu Do Now?

On April 1, Israel killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by attacking Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Iran spent the next two weeks promising revenge, and the world tried to imagine what form that revenge might take. Missile strikes on the Golan Heights? Bombing an Israeli embassy? (Iran has practice at this one.) When I flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv a few days later, I wondered whether Iran would go old-school and attack an El Al check-in counter, the way the terrorists used to in the 1980s. Emirati airport authorities, it turns out, had anticipated that move. They placed the El Al counter next to that of an Iranian airline, so anyone who rolled a grenade at Israelis would also do some damage to passengers bound for the Iranian holy city of Mashhad.

Now we know the form of the retaliation. Late Saturday night, about an hour before midnight Israel time, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles from its own territory, as well as from Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, at the country it refers to as “the Zionist entity.” Almost all were shot down, officials said, eliminated by Israeli air defenses and, notably, by the militaries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. No drones even entered Israeli airspace. This morning, Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army spokesman, beamingly called the defensive operation an “unprecedented success.” The Iranians, for their part, professed happiness with the outcome, though they also seemed eager to forestall an Israeli counterstrike. While the drones were still in the sky, Iran’s UN mission tweeted that the matter of the assassination “can [now] be deemed concluded.”

To summarize: Israel blew up an Iranian general in an Iranian diplomatic mission—the sort of facility normally inviolable under international law, though the Iranian regime is rather famous for its disregard of such proprieties—and for two weeks, Israel and its allies have been preparing for a regional war or unprecedented terror campaign, something that would make the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent Gaza War look like mere prelude. Instead, after its drones and missiles were swatted down like flies, Iran is now suggesting that the two countries call it a tie.

This tie is an astonishing Israeli win. As Hagari suggested, it is an operational triumph, because it demonstrated that swarming attacks from a sophisticated adversary are not effective against Israel over long ranges. These are the same Iranian-made drones that, in Russian hands, have been terrorizing Kyiv for the past two years. In Tel Aviv last night, no air-raid sirens went off. (I didn’t bother setting my alarm, because I was confident that at least a few drones would get through and I’d have to scamper to shelter. I assume many others in Tel Aviv are still snoozing as I write this.) The uneventful night was also a strategic triumph. Iran’s Arab adversaries—Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates—all cooperated, taking concrete measures to keep Iran’s response ineffective. Iran’s Arab allies, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, did not enter the operation in a significant way. The Israeli skydome held up. The strategic alliance held up. Israeli kids get a day off school as a precaution, but other than that, my neighborhood of Tel Aviv looks normal, with the same population of bleary-eyed hipsters out looking for cappuccinos. (The only reported injury was to a 7-year-old Israeli girl, wounded by falling shrapnel. Inconveniently for Iran, she was Arab.)  

The attack is also a gift to the hapless Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, whose incompetence was universally acknowledged just a day ago. Now, after botching the response to the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history, Netanyahu’s government gathers credit for having repelled the most significant Iranian attack in Israel’s history. This morning, one could argue that Israel is safer than it has been since before October 7. “I think there are strategic opportunities,” the IDF spokesperson said in his briefing, and “we should look for those opportunities.” Netanyahu does not even have to launch a counterattack. Joe Biden has advised him that the U.S. will not support one, which relieves Netanyahu of the obligation. European countries that have criticized Israel over Gaza have stopped to condemn Iran instead.

But just because Netanyahu could decide to do nothing precipitous doesn’t mean that he will. He and his cabinet are constantly in search of new and ingenious ways to squander an opportunity. So today in the Middle East everyone is trying to imagine how they will misspend the credit Iran has just extended them. If Netanyahu behaves uncharacteristically, he could reach out to Israel’s Arab allies, and to its international critics, and try to reboot Gaza negotiations and bring home the Israeli hostages who are still alive. With Gaza at least partially in rubble and in famine conditions, and with essentially zero progress in negotiation with Hamas, some jolt to the status quo is necessary. Hamas has shown little interest in achieving a viable deal, and now its position has weakened slightly, because Iran seems so obviously disinclined to intervene in its favor by regionalizing the war. This reminder that Israel’s enemies are not limited to Hamas, and that Israel owes debts to its Arab friends who wish to see Gazans return to their homes (and who not-so-secretly also wish Israel could somehow eliminate Hamas without fuss once and for all), could catalyze a new Israeli reaction to the conflict.

​​These Arab allies deserve Israel’s gratitude. They also might be reminded of what is in their own interest. After all, Iran’s overseas ventures are not limited to Israel. Iran evidently feels free to violate Jordanian airspace as it pleases. If it is willing to swarm Israel with drones, why not Saudi Arabia too? It already attacked Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia’s largest oilfield, in 2019, an attack that went unanswered by Saudi Arabia and the United States. Iran, its Revolutionary Guards Corps at the front, has already wrecked Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Who is next? The Gaza war has alienated Israel from these allies, and in particular from their citizens, who see images of the devastation daily on Al Jazeera. Now Israel can point to Iran’s aggression and disregard of national boundaries as a common cause with which to begin to undo that alienation.

Netanyahu’s government is beholden to right-wing elements that have made a hostage deal difficult to strike and post-invasion Gaza planning almost non-existent. These same right-wing elements want retaliation: If Iran sends 300 drones and missiles to Israel, Israel should send 300 back. (Unlike the Iranian ones, many of the Israeli ones will reach their targets.) Now could be the moment for Netanyhu to tell his right flank to stand down. The reasons Israel is not on a war footing this morning—children are merely in Zoom lessons today, and there have been no further call-ups of reserve troops—are technological (an incredible air-defense system) and diplomatic (a partnership extending from the Levant to the Persian Gulf), not ideological. Many Israelis would welcome a shift back to a national-security-focused right, and away from a fundamentalist religious one. Not long ago, Netanyahu had a sort of proprietary hold on that position in Israeli politics. Now the religious right has a hold on him.

Netanyahu is a master of self-preservation, and he knows he likely will not be the one to lead such a shift. His instinct to stay in power would, in that case, come into conflict with his instinct to preserve and improve Israel’s geostrategic position. Unfortunately, in the contest between those two instincts, the outcome is unlikely to be anything close to a tie.