Netanyahu is threatening regional war to save his career

The Israeli assassination of a top Hezbollah leader in Lebanon — and its apparent assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — threaten to escalate the current disaster across the Middle East to a horrific new level.

For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has painted Iran and its allies as an existential threat to Israel that can only be dealt with militarily. And now, facing global protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, possible charges in the International Criminal Court and calls for new elections in Israel, there’s a real risk that Netanyahu will draw Tehran into a fight just to preserve his political future. 

Why? Because an end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza would derail Netanyahu’s political career. 

Once the war ends, there will be official investigations of Israel’s intelligence and military failures on Oct. 7, which will almost certainly implicate Netanyahu. Frustrated Israelis have already begun their own unofficial inquiry. Netanyahu’s government is tenuous, and he likely would not fare well, were elections to be held now. 

Moreover, Netanyahu — like Donald Trump in the U.S. — faces criminal proceedings domestically, in his case for corruption. When Netanyahu is out of office, he can be tried, convicted and imprisoned, giving him a vested personal interest in remaining prime minister for as long as possible.

Israel has officially neither claimed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s assassination, but its official government press office and numerous officials made statements celebrating the killing in Tehran — which also fits the pattern of a years-long Israeli campaign to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.

The assassinations also serve Netanyahu’s plan to prolong the current crisis.

With Hamas’s chief negotiator now dead, and a new Israeli massacre at a school in Gaza, ceasefire negotiations in Gaza — which Netanyahu’s government had already dragged out and resisted — have been predictably set back. And with Iran and Hezbollah likely to retaliate for the alleged Israeli assassinations in Tehran and Beirut, respectively, Netanyahu’s provocations seem deliberately designed to escalate the regional crisis.

We saw the same pattern play out this spring. 

On April 1, Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, violating the sovereignty of both Syria and Iran. Iran responded by launching hundreds of rockets and drones toward Israel, allowing Israel’s provocation to shift the conversation — albeit momentarily — from one in which Israel was the aggressor to one in which it was acting in self-defense, enabling it to rally the U.S., United Kingdom and Jordanian governments to its aid. 

While Israel continues to provoke Iran, perhaps the most immediate danger is to Lebanon, where Israel is very openly considering an invasion. After promising to continue to “mow the lawn” in Gaza — an Israeli expression for military bombardment — even if a “partial ceasefire” is achieved there, Netanyahu recently said “We will have the option to move part of the force to the north” to Lebanon. “We will do that.”

Since October, there’s been an escalation in hostilities between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that’s allied with Iran. Hezbollah has launched cross-border attacks while Israel struck deep into Lebanese territory and assassinated Hezbollah leaders. Israel’s attacks, which have included the use of white phosphorus, have killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians, displaced 90,000 people and destroyed tens of thousands of olive trees. 

The last time Netanyahu played the card of escalation with Iran, President Biden behaved exactly as Netanyahu wished, putting aside any criticism of the prime minister in defense of Israel. The success of that move portends its repetition by Netanyahu, perhaps more aggressively and with graver consequences. 

This all underscores the urgency of keeping up the pressure to win a permanent ceasefire, stop the flow of weapons to Israel and end the brutal Israeli occupation — particularly in Gaza, where nearly 40,000 Palestinians have died and the International Court of Justice has ruled a genocide is plausibly taking place. 

With the latest escalations, millions of more lives throughout the region also hang in the balance.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and co-director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.