Netanyahu Between Submission to Washington and the Bet on War with Iran:
The Limits of Israeli Decision-Making
Policy Assessment by Ameer Makhoul – Progress Center for Policies
Introduction
Recent political and security developments—both in the Gaza Strip and in the Iranian file—reveal a clear contraction in the room for maneuver available to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, alongside an unprecedented rise in the influence of the U.S. administration led by Donald Trump over Israeli decision-making. At what appears to be a pivotal moment, Netanyahu has shifted from a discourse of defiance and resistance to a position of practical compliance with American dictates, whether regarding arrangements to halt the war in Gaza or the limits of Israeli pressure toward a military confrontation with Iran. This shift has internal repercussions for the cohesion of the governing coalition and external consequences for Israel’s regional standing, while reviving fundamental questions about Netanyahu’s ability to manage the contradiction between his right-wing confrontational rhetoric and the reality of political and strategic dependence on Washington.
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Analysis
Submission to Washington
In a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office shortly after midnight on January 25, the inner security cabinet—widely considered the most right-wing in Israel’s history—announced its approval of what can reasonably be described as full acquiescence to the dictates of the Trump administration. These dictates, conveyed by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, included opening the Rafah crossing in both directions and proceeding with the implementation of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan in its agreed form, without attaching additional Israeli conditions.
This decision came at a time when Israel was intensifying its search for the body of the soldier Gioli, based on information provided by Islamic Jihad and Hamas regarding the burial site. Nevertheless, the cabinet approved the start of the second phase, including opening Rafah, even if the body were not actually recovered—underscoring the scale of U.S. pressure and the limits of Israel’s capacity to impose its own terms.
On Iran, a broad Zionist consensus—cutting across government and opposition—has formed around the need to push the United States toward declaring war on Iran, in order, from the Israeli perspective, to neutralize the Iranian missile threat to Israel’s interior in the event of a confrontation. Yet Israeli governmental sources accuse U.S. envoy Witkoff of being among the figures closest to Trump who are actively working to dissuade him from any military operation against Tehran. The Israeli drive toward war is not confined to the government; it extends to opposition leaders and the mainstream media, which devote extensive coverage to promoting war as a strategic necessity for toppling the Iranian regime, whether through direct military action or by activating opposition forces inside Iran.
Israeli assessments suggest that any future war with Iran would differ fundamentally from last year’s twelve-day confrontation, not only in duration but in objectives. The goal now being discussed, should war erupt, is the overthrow of the Iranian regime, viewed as the only way to eliminate both the nuclear and missile threats. This objective, however, implies sliding into a prolonged war of attrition with uncertain outcomes. The same assessments acknowledge that even intensive U.S. airstrikes would not suffice to topple the regime unless accompanied by internal mobilization within Iranian society. Hence, there is open discussion of the need to prepare the ground through an intensive “war of perception” targeting Iranian society prior to any military action.
Additionally, Israeli assessments attribute U.S. reluctance to launch a war partly to deficiencies in building an effective target bank, particularly given Iran’s development of advanced techniques to conceal long-range missile launch platforms. Economically and militarily, Israel has estimated the cost of intercepting Iranian missiles at approximately five billion shekels, in addition to what TheMarker described as accelerated wear on advanced aircraft—equivalent to three years of service life—due to potential intensive sorties.
Concern Over Reduced Strikes on Iran
Conversely, fears are growing in Israel that Trump may not be genuinely interested in undermining the Iranian regime, but rather in conducting a limited, demonstrative conflict to use as leverage for opening a negotiation track with Tehran—especially on energy and oil—serving a broader U.S. strategy aimed at strengthening control over energy markets and critical minerals essential to advanced technologies, within the framework of economic competition with China. This divergence in objectives offers little reassurance to Netanyahu’s government, which nevertheless lacks the ability to entangle the Trump administration in a comprehensive war with unpredictable consequences. Israeli concern deepens if the confrontation is confined to a limited war, which could ultimately guarantee the regime’s survival.
There are no confirmed Israeli assessments indicating an imminent U.S.–Iran war, despite Israel’s reliance on intelligence it provides to Washington that speaks of the potential for tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Iran—estimates that so far lack independent corroboration.
According to Israeli assessments cited by TheMarker, the Iranian regime has spent the past six months rebuilding its missile arsenal, drawing lessons from last summer’s conflict—most notably the need to strengthen air defense systems and improve missile accuracy. The more successful these efforts are, the higher the costs Israel would bear in any future confrontation.
Domestically, Israeli calculations in pushing toward war rely on the perceived resilience of the Israeli economy, which shows signs of relative recovery despite a multi-front war over the past two years. Yet a majority of Israelis do not support becoming embroiled in a new war with Iran, placing the government before a widening gap between its policies and public opinion. Regionally, Arab and Gulf states, as well as Turkey, strongly oppose any U.S. war on Iran.
In Gaza, Maneuvering Falters
On Gaza, as on Iran, Netanyahu’s government recognizes its inability to diverge from the U.S. position, with its room for maneuver reduced to largely symbolic gestures. The situation has reached the point where Israel Hayom, in its January 25 edition, described Netanyahu’s relationship with the U.S. administration as having reached the level of “humiliation,” arguing that the Trump administration now determines the substance of Israeli decisions. This portrayal clashes with the narrative Netanyahu seeks to sell to his right-wing base—that he is the sole leader capable of challenging Washington and extracting concessions—a narrative he has promoted since his 2015 address to the U.S. Congress against the Iran nuclear deal.
Regarding the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, there had been expectations that Netanyahu’s bet on delaying its implementation—linking it to Hamas’s disarmament and obstructing the work of a technocratic government—would strengthen Israel’s position. However, security, intelligence, and political assessments indicate that Israel is the primary loser from maintaining the status quo, as it forfeits the ability to leverage the war’s outcomes to its advantage, while Hamas gains temporary benefits until the technocratic government begins operating, alongside the executive council emerging from the “Board of Peace.”
Politically and electorally, anxiety within Netanyahu’s coalition is deepening as the image of subordination to U.S. decision-making solidifies, despite Netanyahu’s attempts to portray it as personal achievements. Israel is expected eventually to withdraw from the buffer zone, potentially exacerbating internal conflicts within Likud and the Religious Zionism party over Netanyahu’s succession and the prospect of replacing Bezalel Smotrich. In this context, voices within Likud are pushing to support former general Ofer Winter as a leading figure in Religious Zionism, capitalizing on his popularity within the right and his relative acceptability to the center-right.
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Conclusions
• The available evidence indicates that Netanyahu, despite persistent efforts to present himself as a leader defiant of American will, in practice has little choice but to submit to the U.S. position, whether in Gaza or on Iran. A clear divergence remains between Netanyahu’s and Trump’s objectives regarding Iran: Israel fears that any limited U.S. war could strengthen the Iranian regime rather than topple it, while Israel presses for a comprehensive, open-ended confrontation that entails the risks of a prolonged war of attrition.
• Should a U.S. war on Iran not materialize, this dynamic may rebound negatively on Netanyahu in upcoming electoral contests. At the same time, his government continues to block political solutions, in Gaza and regionally alike, along a path that is increasingly backfiring domestically and eroding what it claims as wartime achievements.
• Ultimately, the scenarios remain open between a full-scale war, a limited demonstrative conflict, or abstention from war altogether—without Israel possessing the ability to determine any of them on its own terms.
