Caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the Israeli military to prepare for a potential attack on Iran as his right-wing coalition government faces a mounting political crisis. Netanyahu has reportedly ignored opposition calls for restraint while attempting to derail the ongoing political transition.
Reports indicate that Netanyahu has held almost daily phone calls with US President Donald Trump to push for renewed military strikes on Iran. Israeli media have documented intense confrontations between Netanyahu and military chief Eyal Zamir, who has resisted proposals for military action over concerns it could trigger a wider conflict.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has received the task of forming a viable government, though success is far from guaranteed.
Netanyahu continues to press for a national unity government that includes his Likud party, or is waiting for Eisenkot’s efforts to fail to force another election.
“Netanyahu is desperate,” said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli political analyst at King’s College London. “He knows – and you can see it from his behaviour – that it is likely that he is politically done, and only a national unity government could save him.”
Political Survival and the Threat of War
Critics and political opponents, including Eisenkot, accuse Netanyahu of attempting to drag the nation into a potentially devastating war for his own political survival, or of deliberately stalling the coalition-building process in the hope of running down the clock.
Despite these accusations, analysts suggest that even his fiercest critics might fall in line if an attack on Iran materializes. “It’s paradoxical,” said Haggai Ram, a professor at Ben-Gurion University and author of Iranophobia.
“Everyone knows it would be contrived, but the hysteria over Iran cuts through everything. If Netanyahu succeeds, and manages to start a war with Iran, of course the opposition would fall in behind him, and the public would expect them to.”
Decades of cold war tensions and persistent warnings about Iran’s nuclear program have shaped public perception in Israel.
Following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, regional hostilities escalated. A 12-day exchange of strikes with Iran occurred in June 2025, followed by a joint attack with the US launched in February, which disrupted some of the world’s critical waterways and thrown financial markets into turmoil.
Public Sentiment and Future Political Outlook
Political psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University said that Netanyahu is “fighting for his life” amid multiple active criminal cases and a majority of the public opposing him and his coalition. While Bar-Tal expressed doubt that Trump would allow Netanyahu to derail US negotiations with Iran, he suggested that Israelis would still support such a war, which could be a card for him to play to create the turmoil needed to extricate himself from his current predicament.
For now, the country remains in a state of permanent expectation. “People know that any case for war would be manufactured,” Ram said, noting that many people regard it as inevitable.
Eisenkot remains tasked with forming a viable government while political negotiations continue.
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