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Analysis
All-out war or de-escalation: what will Netanyahu
do next?
Bethan
McKernan
in
Jerusalem
After Iran’s attack, the Israeli leader faces a
crucial dilemma about how to respond
Sun 14 Apr
2024 16.24 BST
When Saddam
Hussein embarked on his failed venture to capture Kuwait in 1991, the Iraqi
dictator lobbed dozens of Scud missiles at Tel Aviv in the hope of provoking an
Israeli retaliation that would split the US-Arab coalition moving against him.
Washington convinced Israel’s then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, not to step
into the fray, and all-out regional war was averted.
This
weekend Iran became the first sovereign state in 33 years to directly attack
Israel, launching hundreds of missiles and drones overnight. Benjamin Netanyahu
could be said to be facing a similar dilemma to Shamir – but it is his own
decisions and miscalculations since 7 October that have led Israel to this
precarious juncture.
“In the
past it’s been fairly accurate to say Bibi [Netanyahu] was not usually one to
escalate things. In his wars with Hamas, he has preferred short, intense and
limited wars he can calculate are under control,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a
political strategist and policy fellow at the Century Foundation, using the
longtime Israeli leader’s well known moniker.
“The
problem is, 7 October was a gamechanger. How he acted in the past is irrelevant
now because the situation is completely different. It’s the same thing for
Iran: people always said Tehran never retaliates in a serious way. Well, after
this weekend that’s no longer the case.”
Israelis
faced a sleepless night on Saturday when officials announced that, for the
first time, Iran had launched hundreds of missiles and drones towards the
Jewish state, bringing the two enemies closer to the brink of all-out war than
ever before.
The attack
was carefully telegraphed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and almost
all of the munitions were intercepted by Israel’s air force and multilayered
air defence system – albeit with the well-coordinated help of several allies.
The question now is how the beleaguered Netanyahu will respond.
Israeli
officials have promised a “significant, powerful response” to the attack, which
Tehran said was retaliation for the bombing of an Iranian diplomatic building
in Damascus on 1 April that killed two senior Revolutionary Guards commanders
and seven other officers, which Iran has blamed on Israel.
It is not
clear whether the Israeli security cabinet discussed the implications of
hitting such a high-profile target beforehand, despite the soaring tensions
between the two countries since the outbreak of conflict in Gaza and the war of
attrition with Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The US was
quick to say it had not been informed about the strike in advance. It was
nonetheless forced to overcome a widening rift with Netanyahu over Israel’s
conduct in the war in Gaza to come to the aid of its most important regional
ally in the face of repeated threats of revenge from Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Commentators
in Israel are now speculating what Israel’s response will be. “Should the
response be calibrated based on the Iranians’ intentions, or based on the
results of the attack?” asked the well regarded Channel 12.
If Israel’s
leadership was gunning for a war with Iran, the attacks launched late on
Saturday would be ample pretext, Scheindlin said.
As of
Sunday afternoon, initial indications suggest that Israel, under intense US
pressure not to drag the rest of the world into a regional conflict, will hold
fire. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s wartime unity government, said in a
statement before the war cabinet was due to convene: “We will build a regional
coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right
for us.”
But as long
as the war in Gaza rages, the possibility of conflagration is far from over.
Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are calling for a “devastating”
response to the Islamic Republic’s attack, and the Israeli daily Yedioth
Ahronoth reported on Sunday that the “war drums are beating in the war
cabinet’s meeting room”.
“A source
who is very well informed about the marathon talks that were held this past
week said: ‘Had they been filmed and uploaded on to YouTube, there would be 4
million people in Ben Gurion airport today looking for a way to escape from
here,’” the well known columnist Ronan Bergman wrote.
It is too
early to predict the political ramifications of this weekend’s events for
Netanyahu, who sees clinging on to power as long as possible as his best chance
of beating corruption charges, which he has always denied.
While much
of the public is still furious with his refusal to take responsibility for the
intelligence and response failures during the 7 October Hamas attack, and calls
for early elections are growing, the Israeli leader’s coalition remains stable.
Polling suggests Netanyahu’s personal popularity and support for his Likud
party have started to rise again over the last six weeks.
And while
surveys have consistently shown Israeli public support for a ground operation
in Lebanon, after Gaza, to clear the northern border region of the threat posed
by Hezbollah, war with Iran was not a seriously considered possibility until
this weekend.
In the
immediate aftermath of 7 October, Israel rushed headfirst into what has proven
to be a gruelling and violent campaign in Gaza, with no clear notion of “the
day after”. Israel’s war cabinet also almost launched a pre-emptive war against
Hezbollah – which Biden, again, was forced to deter Israel from pursuing.
Half a year
later, almost none of Netanyahu’s objectives in Gaza have been achieved: more
than 100 hostages, many already dead, remain in the strip; much of Hamas’s
leadership is still alive, and the Israeli military is still fending off deadly
counteroffensives in areas it has ostensibly controlled for months.
Netanyahu
has for years rattled his sabre at Tehran – but he has not as yet backed up his
rhetoric with direct and overt action. The people of the region can only hope
that he does not now see this uncharted option as yet another political
opportunity.
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