When Yitzhak Rabin became the prime minister of Israel in 1992, he debated which regional power would be the Jewish state’s stronger enemy – the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Baghdad had the stronger military, but Rabin decided that Tehran posed the larger threat with its combination of Islamist ideology, regional proxies and nuclear ambitions.
Rabin’s response to the looming Iranian threat was negotiating land-for-peace deals with Israel’s immediate neighbours – the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – following the example of the pre-existing peace with Egypt. He argued that a ring of normalisation would strengthen Israeli security and counter the rise of radical Islam, and believed there was an urgency to conclude the peace process before Iran, following the Israeli example, acquired the bomb and became a regional hegemon. Rabin predicted in early 1993 that within a decade, Tehran’s rulers could cross the nuclear threshold.
Rabin was assassinated in 1995 before he could fulfil his grand strategic design. Benjamin Netanyahu, who took the reins in the wake of Rabin’s assassination, amplified his predecessor’s warning about Iran – but flipped the conclusion. To Netanyahu, who opposed giving even an inch of land for peace or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Iranian threat served as the ultimate justification. Netanyahu argued that any area evacuated by Israel would turn into an Iranian-backed terrorist base, and therefore Israel must hold its occupied territories in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon as a “defensive wall”.
Three decades on, Iran holds hundreds of kilos of uranium enriched to near-weapons grade, and is potentially weeks away from having a functional bomb. To Israeli policymakers, the permanent almost-there status of Iran’s nuclear programme has made it into Samuel Beckett’s Godot – always on the verge of arrival but never getting there. Netanyahu spent decades warning of the upcoming Iranian bomb, only to be mocked as cry-wolf exaggeration – or as “chickenshit”, in the words of an Obama administration official who believed the Israeli PM would never dare to launch a preemptive strike on the heavily fortified enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo.
To be sure, even without a nuclear arsenal, Iran’s longtime ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led an expensive effort to promote his lifetime mission of eliminating “the Zionist regime”. Through its allies and proxies, Iran surrounded Israel with a “ring of fire”, deploying hundreds of thousands of missiles, rockets and drones as a powerful deterrent. Hezbollah and Hamas turned southern Lebanon and Gaza, evacuated by Israel in the 2000s, into launching pads for invading Israel with trained guerilla forces – just as Netanyahu had warned. But despite the rhetoric of annihilation, military buildup and occasional rounds of violence, the balance of terror was convenient to both sides. Khamenei could consolidate his regional power, while Netanyahu could avoid peace talks, “manage the conflict” and turn his energy inward to build an autocracy on the ruins of liberal-minded Israel.
The seeming stability was shattered on 7 October, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel without telling its “axis of resistance” in advance. Israel’s counteroffensive – relying on military prowess and ever-growing American support – led to the destruction of Gaza, defeat of Hezbollah, the fall of the Syrian Assad regime, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and closer to home, land-grabbing in the West Bank. The former “chickenshit” has turned in to a trigger-happy warrior. The man who spent his career opposing territorial concessions was now presiding over territorial expansion in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.
On 28 February, Netanyahu raised his strategic bet to a previously unthinkable level, harnessing US president Donald Trump to an American-Israeli campaign to overthrow the Iranian government – beginning with the assassination of Khamenei, who had ordered the killing of thousands of protesters in Iran’s streets several weeks earlier. As I write, the war is escalating into a wider regional conflict with serious global ramifications, but Trump and Netanyahu have vowed to push on with the tacit support of the Gulf Arab countries and even Europe.
Their self-praising rhetoric notwithstanding, the two allies face different considerations. Israeli public opinion overwhelmingly supports the attack on Iran, even if some remain suspicious of Netanyahu’s motives given his ongoing corruption trial and looming re-election campaign. Trump is encountering opposition to the war ahead of the US midterms. Netanyahu, therefore, suspects his ally of wanting to reach a deal with Khamenei’s successor, that would allow the regime’s resurrection with a limited nuclear programme. Israel would prefer a friendlier Iranian government, but could also make do with a messy failed state as in Iraq, Syria or Libya, its powerless former enemies. Whatever the outcome, Netanyahu would use it to justify his land-grabbing and autocracy-building projects.
But as Rabin had rightly foreseen, Israel cannot rely forever on its military power and the hope of American backing while keeping its conflicts with its neighbours unresolved. The events of 7 October were a painful reminder that ignoring the Palestinians inevitably carries the risk of another explosion. Its lesson is clear: rather than crushing the Palestinians and humiliating its neighbours, Israel should use its unprecedented strength to conclude the ring of peace Rabin envisioned – recognised borders, Palestinian independence and dignity for all. But to get there, Israel needs a new Rabin.
