For years, critics of Israel’s prime minister joked darkly about the “wag the dog” theory — the idea that a leader under political pressure might welcome a war to shift attention or secure his legacy. With Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran, the reality is both more complicated and more revealing.
Netanyahu did not invent the Iranian threat for political convenience. Confronting Tehran has been the defining strategic project of his career. From speeches at the United Nations brandishing cartoon bombs to decades of warnings about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Netanyahu has argued — often against skeptical allies — that the Islamic Republic represents the central danger to Israel and perhaps to the wider Middle East.
Now, after years of pressure, the confrontation he long anticipated has arrived.
And it has arrived through a political partnership uniquely suited to Netanyahu’s approach. Rather than trying to persuade the American public or Congress, Netanyahu focused his efforts on what one former adviser called “an audience of one”: President Donald Trump. The two leaders — each combative, each convinced of his own historic mission — found common ground in the belief that Iran’s regime could and should be decisively weakened.
The result is a campaign that may reshape the region. It also binds the political fortunes of both leaders to its outcome.
For Netanyahu, the stakes at home could hardly be higher. Few leaders in Israel’s history have governed as long or as controversially. Even before the war, he faced deep domestic opposition and legal troubles. The trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks severely damaged his reputation for security competence.
Yet wartime politics can reorder the public mood. Recent polling suggests large majorities of Jewish Israelis trust Netanyahu’s management of the Iran conflict — even among voters who remain sharply critical of him in other areas.
History, however, offers a cautionary note. Winston Churchill led Britain to victory in World War II only to lose the election that followed. Israelis, like voters everywhere, can separate battlefield leadership from broader judgments about governance. Netanyahu may yet discover that winning a war does not automatically secure political survival.
For Jews outside Israel, the implications are different but no less significant.
Diaspora communities have long been caught between deep emotional solidarity with Israel and the political realities of their own societies. A successful campaign against Iran — especially one that decisively dismantles its nuclear ambitions or weakens the regime — could strengthen Israel’s strategic standing and reinforce support among many Jews worldwide.
But a prolonged or inconclusive conflict carries risks. If the war expands, drags on, or becomes politically controversial in the United States and Europe, Jewish communities abroad could once again find themselves navigating accusations of divided loyalty or pressure to publicly distance themselves from Israeli policy. In that sense, the outcome of the Iran campaign will not only shape the Middle East. It will also shape the political environment in which diaspora Jews live and advocate.
For Netanyahu, the war represents the culmination of a lifelong argument about Iran and Israel’s place in the region. For Israel and the Jewish world, it represents something larger still: a strategic gamble whose consequences will echo far beyond the battlefield.
Whether it proves visionary or a gamble that failed will depend on the one variable that even the most determined leaders cannot fully control — how the war ends.
