{"id":26411,"date":"2024-04-14T17:12:10","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T17:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/14\/iran-attack-tests-netanyahus-political-staying-power\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T17:12:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T17:12:10","slug":"iran-attack-tests-netanyahus-political-staying-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/14\/iran-attack-tests-netanyahus-political-staying-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Attack Tests Netanyahu\u2019s Political Staying Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Iran<\/div>


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In a deeply divided Israel, even the dramatic scene above the country\u2019s skies on Sunday is open to political interpretation.<\/p>\n

For supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel\u2019s display of defensive technology against an Iranian salvo that included hundreds of drones and missiles proves Mr. Netanyahu has long been right to warn about the threat posed by Iran.<\/p>\n

His opponents are loath to give him any credit, reserving their praise for the air force.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike everything in Israel in recent years, the story is split into two narratives,\u201d said Mazal Mualem, an Israeli political commentator for Al-Monitor, a Middle East news site, and the author of a recent biography of the Israeli leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe division and polarization in Israeli society prevents people from seeing the full picture,\u201d Ms. Mualem added.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s barrage on Sunday, launched in response to an Israeli attack on an Iranian Embassy building this month in Damascus that killed several high-ranking commanders in Iran\u2019s armed forces, came at a perilous time for Mr. Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

At home, he is an unpopular leader whom many hold responsible for his government\u2019s policy and intelligence failures that led to the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to go to war in Gaza. Abroad, he is the focus of international censure<\/a> over Israel\u2019s prosecution of that war, which has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans.<\/p>\n

How he ultimately emerges from this episode may depend on what happens next.<\/p>\n

Mr. Netanyahu now must make a choice. Will he respond to Iran with a forceful counterattack and potentially entangle Israel and other countries in a broader war? Or will he absorb the attack, which gravely injured one 7-year-old girl but otherwise did limited damage, and defer to the coalition that helped defend Israel in the interests of regional stability?<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s allies have been urging restraint.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is whether Israel is going to retaliate immediately, or surprise the Iranians in one way or another,\u201d said Efraim Halevy, who served as director of Mossad, Israel\u2019s intelligence agency, during the latter part of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s first term in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

No Israeli leader has warned about Iran so consistently as Mr. Netanyahu or, for that matter, has spent so long in office. Israel\u2019s longest serving prime minister, he has been in power for about 17 years overall.<\/p>\n

Since his first year in office in 1996, Mr. Netanyahu warned<\/a> that a nuclear Iran would be catastrophic and that time was running out. For the nearly three decades since, he has been sounding the same alarm.<\/p>\n

Iran maintains a network of proxy militias across the region, including in Gaza, which the government funds and supplies with weapons. Some of those militias in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon <\/span>have battled with Israel, creating distractions for the Israeli government and military amid the war with Hamas.<\/p>\n

But perhaps more troubling, experts say, is that Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s backers still credit him with having put Iran\u2019s nuclear program on the world agenda then, and they praise him now for investing in the mighty, multilayered air defense system that allowed Israel and its allies, including the United States, to intercept the vast majority of Iranian drones and missiles this weekend before they reached Israel.<\/p>\n

Sometimes resorting to gimmicks and antics to draw attention to Iran\u2019s nuclear progress, Mr. Netanyahu has in the past made opposing Iran a key part of his global diplomacy. Once, at the United Nations General Assembly he held up a cartoonish drawing of a bomb<\/a> marked with red lines depicting enrichment levels. Another time, at the Munich Security Conference, he waved around a piece of wreckage from what he said was an Iranian drone sent from Syria and shot down by Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere he went he was talking about it,\u201d recalled Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany and for years the Ministry of Foreign Affairs point man coordinating diplomatic efforts on regional security and the Iranian threat.<\/p>\n

At times, Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s campaign against Iran has severely strained Israel\u2019s relations with American presidents, though bipartisan U.S. support for Israel has long been considered a strategic asset.<\/p>\n

Around 2012, Mr. Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration by pushing hard for President Barack Obama to set clear \u201cred lines\u201d on Iran\u2019s nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike. Before that, the Israeli prime minister was making plans for a unilateral Israeli strike in the face of tough opposition from Washington and public criticism from a string of former Israeli security chiefs. It was never clear if Mr. Netanyahu was bluffing, and the prospect of an imminent strike receded.<\/p>\n

He further challenged Mr. Obama in 2015 with an impassioned speech to a joint meeting of Congress denouncing what he called a \u201cbad deal\u201d being negotiated by the United States and other world powers with Iran to curb its nuclear program.<\/p>\n

When President Donald J. Trump came to power, Mr. Netanyahu encouraged him to withdraw from the agreement \u2014 a move that many Israeli experts have called a dire mistake and a failure of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s Iran policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, there have been no constraints on the program,\u201d Mr. Issacharoff said, adding, \u201cIt has never been more advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was also under Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s watch that Israel forged diplomatic relations with more Arab states that are considered part of the moderate, anti-Iranian axis, including the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what comes next, Ms. Mualem, the Netanyahu biographer, said, \u201cBibi is still in the game,\u201d referring to him by his nickname. \u201cHe\u2019s a central player, and it isn\u2019t over, diplomatically or politically. And he plays a long game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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In a deeply divided Israel, even the dramatic scene above the country\u2019s skies on Sunday is open to political interpretation. For supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel\u2019s display of defensive technology against an Iranian salvo that included hundreds of drones and missiles proves Mr. Netanyahu has long been right to warn about the threat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/05\/16\/world\/14mideast-crisis-blog-netanyahu\/16israel1-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2601,19606,20253,234,2974,9180,7795],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26413,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411\/revisions\/26413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}