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July 2, 2025, 3:38 PM View Comments ()

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the 12-day war with Iran holds out the delicious prospect of a “total victory” that has long eluded him in Gaza. Indeed, such a victory could be what he needs to erase the dark stain on his record from Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. That would not only secure his legacy, but, just as importantly for the perpetual politician, it may just open the door to yet another term as prime minister.

But will it?

In the United States, a highly charged debate is underway over whether the Israeli and U.S. attacks “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program (as U.S. President Donald Trump insists) or did little more than delay it for a few months (according to initial findings by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency). But in Israel, the war is perceived as a huge success. Media coverage has focused on the achievements of the Israeli Air Force and the Mossad. The shekel is at its strongest against the dollar in more than two years. And the local stock market is tracing new highs on the assumption that the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat has been effectively eliminated, which will improve Israel’s political risk profile. On the Israeli side, the war ended with no reported military casualties, just 28 civilian deaths (compared with projections in the hundreds or even thousands), and limited material damage.

Yet, to date, there is little sign that Netanyahu has been able to capitalize politically from the war. In six reliable polls taken since June 18 (about the time it was clear that the fight with Iran was going Israel’s way), Netanyahu’s Likud party saw a bump, compared with six polls taken in the run-up to the war. But it was hardly dramatic: If elections were held today, Likud would capture 26 seats in the 120-member Knesset, according to the poll average, up from 22 prewar but way down from the 36 the party currently has. Moreover, some of Likud’s gains have come at the expense of its far-right coalition partner Otzma Yehudit. The rest came from a newly formed party led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a right-wing politician who, if polls are correct, is the man most likely to form the next government if Netanyahu is unseated. But the polls show Bennett trailing by a mere two seats, and his chances of forming a coalition are better.

The bottom line thus remains much the same as it was before the Iran war. The Netanyahu government—a coalition of right, far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties—would not be able to garner a Knesset majority. The opposition (even without the three Arab-led parties in the Knesset) remains better positioned to do so, even as the prime minister basks in the postwar glow. With no more victories to tout going forward, it is unlikely Netanyahu will be able to leverage his wartime successes any further.

Why hasn’t the Israeli public rallied to the prime minister? A lot has to do with Netanyahu himself. To try to escape blame for the debacle of Oct. 7, he and his allies pointed the finger at the defense establishment for its failure to anticipate the Hamas attack and respond fast enough when it began. The most extreme of Netanyahu’s allies even tried to frame the army’s failure as an act of conscious betrayal aimed at bringing down the prime minister.

The public never bought this version of events, according to polls, but Netanyahu’s messaging did have the perverse effect of erecting a wall between the country’s political and military leadership. They were no longer seen as a team working together to defend Israel. And while the elected leaders received poor marks for their wartime performance, the army and intelligence agencies were praised. That divide grew even wider last year after the defense establishment defeated Hezbollah in Lebanon and knocked out much of Iran’s air defenses in tit-for-tat strikes. Notably, Netanyahu failed to gain any political capital, and that is the case today. A survey conducted in mid-June found that the defense establishment enjoyed the public’s trust (82 percent in regards to the army), far more than Netanyahu (35 percent) or his government (30 percent). Even right-wing voters expressed more trust in the Israel Defense Forces than in the government.

It is tempting to compare Netanyahu to Winston Churchill (Netanyahu is reportedly wont to do that himself), who led Britain to a historic victory in World War II only to be ignominiously tossed out of office shortly after V-E Day. There may be some parallels. While British voters admired Churchill’s wartime leadership, the Conservatives were weighed down by their failed prewar policies. Labour Party leader Clement Attlee’s call for Britain to now “win the peace” by looking to the future better reflected the national mood. Netanyahu not only has the debacle of Oct. 7 weighing on him, but he leads a deeply unpopular government stacked with ministers out of their depth. These ministers ignited a nationwide controversy shortly after taking office with a poorly conceived and executed plan to weaken and politicize the judicial system.

What Netanyahu’s next step will be remains unclear. Israel’s next scheduled election is in October 2026, but it is unlikely that his government will survive until then. It continues to be dogged by the question of military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim. The coalition’s two Haredi parties insist that they will bring down the government (and almost did two days before the Iran war started) unless it wins Knesset approval for a bill that would continue to exempt Haredim from the draft. But the exemption is hugely unpopular with non-Haredi Israelis, including the coalition’s base. The government may fall over this issue sometime in the fall. Even if it survives, it faces another difficult test in trying to pass the 2026 budget, which, according to law, it must do by next March. At a time when Israel’s war in Gaza and Iran have caused defense spending to balloon, the coalition will struggle to find a way to pay for all that military spending without taking the politically unpopular steps of raising taxes, cutting civilian programs, or increasing deficit spending—which is widely viewed as economically irresponsible.

Netanyahu himself has indicated that he has no plans to exit politics and that he envisions another term as prime minister. He has talked about the “many tasks” he has to complete and has begun to mix with voters and sit for television interviews (friendly media only) after mostly avoiding them since Oct 7. Some people close to him were saying immediately after the Israel-Iran cease-fire that Netanyahu was weighing a snap election. But unless his poll numbers start changing for the better, that seems like a risky strategy.

Other analysts are saying that the prime minister wants to add two more feathers to his cap before calling an election. The first is to wind up the war in Gaza, now in its 20th month, and bring back the remaining hostages still held by Hamas. The second is to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and bring it, and perhaps other Arab countries, into the Abraham Accords. Both would be politically popular with the mass of Israeli voters, but Netanyahu’s coalition partners and much of his base would not look favorably on either measure. His far-right partners want to continue fighting in Gaza with the barely concealed aim of expelling its Palestinian population and rebuilding the Israeli settlements there that were evacuated in 2005. They will oppose any gestures toward a Palestinian state, which is likely to be a Saudi condition for normalization.

One possible scenario is that Netanyahu starts the ball rolling on these two issues, the far-right rebels, and/or the Haredim leave the government over the draft law, triggering an early election. He could then make the case to voters that he needs another term to finish what he started—to gain the release of all remaining hostages and secure normalization with Saudi Arabia. The opposition today is feckless and divided into four parties of roughly equal strength, with no obvious leader. Bennett’s new party might fill the vacuum, but it is too early to say. Savior politicians heading new parties tend to rise and fall quickly in Israel. Bennett himself stepped down in June 2022 after a year as prime minister, hated by his right-wing base for agreeing to head a government that included leftist and Arab-led parties. His strong showing in the polls may be more a function of the lack of inspiring non-Netanyahu alternatives and could fade by election day.

In that case, Netanyahu could come out on top in an early election, with a party that’s weakened but perhaps still the largest faction in the Knesset. Bennett said recently that he wouldn’t join a government led by Netanyahu, but he and other right-wingers who have kept their distance from the Israeli leader might change their tune after an election defeat, especially if the alternative is a return to the opposition or putting the country through more elections. The odds remain slim, but Netanyahu may find himself back in the prime minister’s office against all expectations.