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In a deeply divided Israel, even the dramatic scene above the nation’s skies on Sunday is open to political interpretation.
For supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s show of defensive know-how in opposition to an Iranian salvo that included lots of of drones and missiles proves Mr. Netanyahu has lengthy been proper to warn in regards to the menace posed by Iran.
His opponents are loath to offer him any credit score, reserving their reward for the air drive.
“Like the whole lot in Israel in recent times, the story is break up into two narratives,” mentioned Mazal Mualem, an Israeli political commentator for Al-Monitor, a Center East information web site, and the creator of a current biography of the Israeli chief.
“The division and polarization in Israeli society prevents individuals from seeing the total image,” Ms. Mualem added.
Iran’s barrage on Sunday, launched in response to an Israeli assault on an Iranian Embassy constructing this month in Damascus that killed a number of high-ranking commanders in Iran’s armed forces, got here at a dangerous time for Mr. Netanyahu.
At residence, he’s an unpopular chief whom many maintain accountable for his authorities’s coverage and intelligence failures that led to the lethal Hamas-led assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to go to battle in Gaza. Overseas, he’s the main focus of worldwide censure over Israel’s prosecution of that battle, which has resulted within the deaths of tens of 1000’s of Gazans.
How he in the end emerges from this episode might rely upon what occurs subsequent.
Mr. Netanyahu now should make a alternative. Will he reply to Iran with a forceful counterattack and probably entangle Israel and different nations in a broader battle? Or will he take up the assault, which gravely injured one 7-year-old lady however in any other case did restricted injury, and defer to the coalition that helped defend Israel within the pursuits of regional stability?
Israel’s allies have been urging restraint.
“The query is whether or not Israel goes to retaliate instantly, or shock the Iranians in a technique or one other,” mentioned Efraim Halevy, who served as director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence company, through the latter a part of Mr. Netanyahu’s first time period within the Nineties.
No Israeli chief has warned about Iran so constantly as Mr. Netanyahu or, for that matter, has spent so lengthy in workplace. Israel’s longest serving prime minister, he has been in energy for about 17 years total.
Since his first yr in workplace in 1996, Mr. Netanyahu warned {that a} nuclear Iran can be catastrophic and that point was operating out. For the almost three a long time since, he has been sounding the identical alarm.
Iran maintains a community of proxy militias throughout the area, together with in Gaza, which the federal government funds and provides with weapons. A few of these militias in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon have battled with Israel, creating distractions for the Israeli authorities and navy amid the battle with Hamas.
However maybe extra troubling, consultants say, is that Iran is nearer than ever to acquiring a nuclear weapon. Mr. Netanyahu’s backers nonetheless credit score him with having put Iran’s nuclear program on the world agenda then, and so they reward him now for investing within the mighty, multilayered air protection system that allowed Israel and its allies, together with the USA, to intercept the overwhelming majority of Iranian drones and missiles this weekend earlier than they reached Israel.
Typically resorting to gimmicks and antics to attract consideration to Iran’s nuclear progress, Mr. Netanyahu has up to now made opposing Iran a key a part of his world diplomacy. As soon as, on the United Nations Basic Meeting he held up a cartoonish drawing of a bomb marked with crimson strains depicting enrichment ranges. One other time, on the Munich Safety Convention, he waved round a bit of wreckage from what he mentioned was an Iranian drone despatched from Syria and shot down by Israel.
“In all places he went he was speaking about it,” recalled Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany and for years the Ministry of International Affairs level man coordinating diplomatic efforts on regional safety and the Iranian menace.
At occasions, Mr. Netanyahu’s marketing campaign in opposition to Iran has severely strained Israel’s relations with American presidents, although bipartisan U.S. help for Israel has lengthy been thought-about a strategic asset.
Round 2012, Mr. Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration by pushing onerous for President Barack Obama to set clear “crimson strains” on Iran’s nuclear progress that may immediate the USA to undertake a navy strike. Earlier than that, the Israeli prime minister was planning for a unilateral Israeli strike within the face of powerful opposition from Washington and public criticism from a string of former Israeli safety chiefs. It was by no means clear if Mr. Netanyahu was bluffing, and the prospect of an imminent strike receded.
He additional challenged Mr. Obama in 2015 with an impassioned speech to a joint assembly of Congress denouncing what he known as a “dangerous deal” being negotiated by the USA and different world powers with Iran to curb its nuclear program.
When President Donald J. Trump got here to energy, Mr. Netanyahu inspired him to withdraw from the settlement — a transfer that many Israeli consultants have known as a dire mistake and a failure of Mr. Netanyahu’s Iran coverage.
“Since then, there have been no constraints on this system,” Mr. Issacharoff mentioned, including, “It has by no means been extra superior.”
Nevertheless it was additionally underneath Mr. Netanyahu’s watch that Israel cast diplomatic relations with extra Arab states which can be thought-about a part of the reasonable, anti-Iranian axis, together with the United Arab Emirates.
No matter what comes subsequent, Ms. Mualem, the Netanyahu biographer, mentioned, “Bibi remains to be within the recreation,” referring to him by his nickname. “He’s a central participant, and it isn’t over, diplomatically or politically. And he performs a protracted recreation.”
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