Netanyahu maintains uncharacteristic silence as quick resolution in Iran eludes US and Israel

Summary

• Netanyahu is quiet during the Iran war, communicating through US media, as its fate rests with President Trump, not Israeli citizens.
• The Israeli leader has to contend with the danger that Mr Trump may decide to pull the plug on the entire operation and that Israel will shoulder the blame for what could end up being regarded as a strategic flop.
• If a ground operation against Hezbollah is to be carried out, the call-up of reservists would have to be widened, and that would prove deeply unpopular with Israel’s public.

LONDON – For someone who has been in the thick of all the preparations for the military offensive against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now uncharacteristically quiet. Two weeks into a war which he passionately promoted, his voice is seldom heard.

When Mr Netanyahu does communicate, he prefers to do this in English-language interviews with Fox News and other US TV outlets that he knows will be watched by US President Donald Trump, rather than address his own Israeli citizens, who are spending large chunks of their daily lives in air raid shelters.

All very strange, yet all fairly logical.

For Mr Netanyahu knows that the fate of this war will be decided in the White House, rather than in his Tel Aviv command bunkers.

He also knows that the original aims of this war – to achieve regime change in Iran and prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons – will now not be quickly achieved, so keeping silent for now may be the best political course.

Besides, Mr Netanyahu also faces hard decisions on whether to widen the war by launching a massive military offensive in Lebanon, or keep all resources concentrated against Iran.

Many politicians and analysts in both Washington and the capitals of the Middle East believe that Mr Trump was pushed into the war by Mr Netanyahu.

Did Netanyahu push Trump into the Iran war?

Far-right media personalities like Mr Tucker Carlson have gone even further. In his March 4 weekly show, Mr Carlson claimed that the current war “happened because Israel wanted it to happen” and then went on to peddle anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about an imaginary cabal of elderly Jews who pushed Mr Trump into a “global religious war” to be fought between Christians and Muslims.

All this is nonsense. Mr Trump is not famous for accepting guidance from anyone. And although he is friendly with Mr Netanyahu, the US President does not hesitate to overrule the Israeli Prime Minister whenever he wants to. In June last year, he even humiliated Mr Netanyahu by ordering him in public to stop attacking Iran.

There is no question that Mr Netanyahu pushed hard for the current war. But Mr Trump launched the offensives because he believed them to be right, not because he was pushed into it by Israeli lobbying.

“If the United States is at war, it is because US leaders judged that US interests required it. That judgment may be flawed. It may prove costly. But it was made in Washington,” said Professor Steven Simon, a US specialist on the Middle East.

Mr Netanyahu clearly sees the present war as his personal achievement. For decades, Mr Netanyahu urged action against the dangers he believed were posed by the Islamic republic, and now he has the world’s most potent military power joining in Israel’s enterprise.

A lifeline for Netanyahu?

While the Trump administration is struggling to provide a coherent justification for the war, Mr Netanyahu enjoys broad domestic support.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called it “the most justified operation there is”. And former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is considered a serious challenger for the office, told the Israeli Prime Minister that “the entire nation of Israel stands behind you until the Iranian threat is eliminated”.

All this is handy for the Israeli leader, who has to call a new general election by October. For Mr Netanyahu, the operations against Iran are an opportunity to go down in history as Israel’s saviour.

Conveniently, the war also distracts from his ongoing corruption trial or his alleged responsibility for the military failures of Oct 7, 2023, when a shocking raid by the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis.

The snag for Mr Netanyahu is that although the Israeli Air Force has conducted its biggest operations since the creation of the Jewish state eight decades ago – combining superb intelligence about Iranian targets with precision ammunition and attacks by hundreds of aircraft each day – the biggest prize for Israel, that of toppling the clerical regime in Iran, remains as elusive as ever.

The Israeli leader also has to contend with the danger that Mr Trump may decide to pull the plug on the entire operation and that Israel will shoulder the blame for what could end up being regarded as a strategic flop.

Hezbollah is ‘alive and kicking’

Meanwhile, the Israeli leader faces a new challenge: the potential need for another all-out war, including a ground offensive, against the Iranian-aligned Hezbollah military in Lebanon.

The militia was largely destroyed, and most of its top leadership was killed in 2024, but some of its structures remain operational.

A total of around 200 rockets and drones were fired by Hezbollah at Israel’s northern cities on March 11, in an operation coordinated with Iran. Iran’s strategy is obvious: to draw Israel into a new ground war in Lebanon.

And this may well happen, with Israel concerned about indications that Hezbollah’s crack unit, the Radwan Force, is being deployed close to its border with Lebanon.

“Rumours about the death of Hezbollah have been exaggerated. The organisation is weaker than it was two years ago, but it is alive and kicking and capable of launching attacks,” writes Mr Amos Harel, one of Israel’s top military analysts.

Fears of Trump walking away

The Israeli military has called up 70,000 Israeli reservists over the past two weeks. Still, most of these are pledged to the Israeli Air Force and Military Intelligence, the branches most directly involved in the current offensives against Iran.

If a ground operation against Hezbollah is now contemplated, the call-up of reservists would have to be widened considerably, and that would prove deeply unpopular with Israel’s public.

The Israeli government hopes that cracks will appear in Iran’s clerical government well before Mr Trump tires of the entire confrontation, allowing both the Israelis and Americans to claim victory.

That’s why Israel has now begun drone attacks on security checkpoints mounted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on the streets of the Iranian capital of Tehran, to weaken the Iranian government’s domestic control.

But some of Israel’s tactics – such as the destruction of oil depots around Tehran, which unleashed toxic fumes that blackened the Iranian capital – have created tensions between US and Israeli military planners. US officials have reportedly asked Israel to reduce strikes on energy facilities, viewing them as an unnecessary escalation that risks global economic disruption.

Either way, Mr Netanyahu has plenty of reasons to lie low, at least for the moment.