{"id":482513,"date":"2026-06-08T16:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/482513\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T16:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:13:09","slug":"resuming-war-is-a-short-term-political-boon-for-netanyahu-but-grim-choices-await","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/482513\/","title":{"rendered":"Resuming War Is a Short-Term Political Boon for Netanyahu, but Grim Choices Await"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a resumption of fighting with Iran offered clear advantages \u2014 at least in the short term.<\/p>\n

It showed his restive political base that he was willing to stand up to President Trump, who had scolded Israel on Sunday for bombing the outskirts of Beirut and, when Iran fired missiles at Israel in response, argued that Israel should exercise restraint.<\/p>\n

Resisting Mr. Trump \u2014 or at least making a show of doing so, since it was unclear just what the two leaders said when they spoke Sunday night \u2014 was vital to Mr. Netanyahu, who is trailing in the polls heading into a difficult re-election fight. Just a week ago, Mr. Trump had humiliated him in an angry, profanity-laced phone call<\/a> in which, the president later confirmed, he had called Mr. Netanyahu \u201ccrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Netanyahu also fears that the peace deal the Trump administration is pursuing with Iran would prove disastrous for Israel by, among other things, tying its hands in dealing with Hezbollah, the militant group that dominates Lebanon. If an exchange of airstrikes with Iran carries the risk of spiraling into a return to full-blown warfare, it could also make any broader peace agreement more difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n

Some Israeli analysts suggested that a few days of Israeli attacks could help achieve better terms with Iran in those talks, by inflicting fresh wounds and pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it depends on what the Iranians do,\u201d said Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group that pushes for a close U.S. partnership with Israel and confrontation with Iran. He said Iran\u2019s boastful posture \u2014 that it won the war with the United States and Israel by surviving their onslaught, and by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 belied the serious damage that it had sustained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assume that they wanted to vent, not that they wanted a couple of weeks of Israeli jets all over their skies,\u201d Mr. Hulata said of Iran\u2019s modest missile barrages at Israel. \u201cThey appear strong, but that doesn\u2019t mean they are strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others argued that Sunday\u2019s Iranian missile strikes on Israel boded poorly for Israel in the longer term. Israel sees no alternative to hitting back though that appears likely to put it in conflict with Mr. Trump, sooner or later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no good choices here,\u201d said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli military intelligence officer who specializes in Iran.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Trump allows Israel to escalate the fighting, Mr. Citrinowicz predicted that Iran would expand its retaliation, and not just through Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, who fired two missiles at Israel Monday and threatened to attack Israeli and Israeli-affiliated shipping from transiting the Red Sea. He suggested that Shiite militias in Iraq could also be drawn in.<\/p>\n

But if Mr. Trump demands that Israel stand down, Mr. Citrinowicz said, that could cement an equation that Iran has been trying to achieve. It could reinforce a direct linkage between the Iranian and Lebanese theaters, in which Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in and around Beirut can be met with Iranian attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the strategic reality will be worse for Israel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a resumption of fighting with Iran offered clear advantages \u2014 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[192869,76676,86,85,87,46,2897,43,627],"class_list":["post-482513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin","tag-donald-j","tag-hezbollah","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-netanyahu","tag-news","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}