Netanyahu’s Iran endgame is edging closer ...Middle East

There is a recurring question raised about Benjamin Netanyahu — alongside “when will he go away” and “surely he can’t survive this”: What does he want? Why is he doing this? And ever since he not only survived his colossal failure to anticipate the 7 October attacks, but upped the stakes with an ever expanding war that has now come to include his personal nemesis and Israel’s greatest rival for regional hegemony, Iran: What is the endgame?

Netanyahu certainly has personal motivations to prolong the war as much as possible — the fractiousness of his coalition, his own deep unpopularity, and the still realistic prospect of ending up in jail on corruption charges. He has also been fixated on Iran for decades — virtually alone among Israeli politicians, until 7 October — and has infamously fetishised Winston Churchill, with the War on Terror years melding this hodgepodge into a single delusional narrative where he himself is Churchill and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Hitler planning to subjugate the West entirely (the complete opposite of Iran’s uber-conservative, anti expansionist foreign policy.)

Personal survival is certainly a strong motivator of his conduct thus far. In part, Netanyahu has survived by sheer obstinacy. He is the great limpet of Israeli politics, confident that if he only holds on to the ship of state, everything else will wash over — the coalition crises, the beefs with American presidents, patricidal political heirs-apparent, and, above all, the perpetual outrage of the liberal opposition at home and abroad, which he’s always managed to disregard, splinter and outplay.

But raising the stakes simply for fear of leaving the table is not a good enough explanation. Netanyahu doesn’t feel his pockets for any last coins among the lint balls. He bets the house — never his own house, of course — repeatedly, enthusiastically, with gusto.

And here the explanation is a lot less static. Netanyahu has always survived, and even thrived, by having more than one reason to do any one thing, and anticipating more than one favourable outcome. To a man unencumbered by Netanyahu’s phenomenal ego and historical megalomania, this might have translated into diplomatic agility, a preternatural talent for building bridges and offramps: why risk everything if I can get something? In Netanyahu’s case, all these beneficial scenarios stack up: why risk not getting everything?

The simplest answer to the question of what Netanyahu wants is: whatever I can get away with. The good news is that he does understand pushback when he meets it, especially if it’s unequivocal and offered up by a stronger actor than himself; as was the case when he was all but bullied, reportedly, into agreeing to the ceasefire in Gaza in December, ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The bad news is that he’s extremely good at coaxing small compromises from anyone who could offer that pushback — now including, it seems at the time of writing, Trump .

So once again: what is the endgame with Iran? There isn’t a single one, indeed, since the new war began Netanyahu, his ministers and their officials have all briefed a menu of options, from least ambitious to most: sufficient degrading of the Iranian nuclear project to extend breakout time from months to many years or even decades; destroying the nuclear project altogether; in addition, destroying or decommissioning the ballistic missiles project; and all of the above, plus regime change.

What of these is achievable? There are many scenarios to play through. It would appear that Netanyahu sold Trump on the idea that Israel can achieve the first or even second objectives alone, and then have Iran immediately crawl back to the negotiating table. Total destruction of the programme was always fib — Israel lacks the munitions required to do deep and lasting damage to Iran’s nuclear programme without heavy American bombers, and now it depends if Trump will go along with the war he obviously didn’t want — and one that would define his presidency — or if he tells Netanyahu to cash it in. This is one endgame.

Regime change would prove much more elusive and costly both to Israel and to the US: it is perfectly possible for them to displace or kill off the current regime structure, but it is practically impossible to imagine an actor who can take control of the country and enjoy the minimal legitimacy needed to govern, if they come on the back of the most traumatic violent experience in the country’s history. Still, this is another.

And finally, there is one endgame that would appeal peculiarly to Netanyahu as he appears through his actions, not through his rhetoric. It is this: no endgame as such. Nothing as tidy. Destroy Iran’s infrastructure, decapitate but not eliminate the old regime, instil a new regime but then leave it to hack it alone: foment permanent instability and civil war (and in the meantime, build trade alliances with the Arab states autocratic enough to eventually absorb popular disgust at Israel’s actions in Gaza and beyond.)

square IRAN Analysis

The videos Iran doesn't want you to see - its Gen Z partying as bombs fall

This would track: Israel has practised overt divide and rule in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in Ramallah, and has just been caught red-handed trying to back Palestinian organised crime groups against Hamas. It has largely sat on the sidelines in Syria, letting its once most formidable foe toconsume itself in a decade and a half of civil war of its own making, and has just attempted — unsuccessfully so far — to drive a wedge between the new government in Damascus and the Druze minority. It would be more than happy to see surviving factions of the regime and various opposition devour each other for decades, or see Iran fall apart into its different regions and constituent states.

This is a dangerous and terrible game to play for everyone in the region – the demolition of Iraq, a far lesser potential for chaos than Iran, produced Isis, among sundry other ills we’re only starting to come to terms with. It would also mire America permanently in a much larger forever war abroad, whether it wants to or not (or force it to retreat ignominiously, which is almost the same thing), signalling the final and fatal decline of American power.

And then there’s a wildcard unique to the Iran situation. Even this very dire but familiar scenario relies on the assumption that Israel and America really do know everything about Iran’s nuclear programme and that there wasn’t an emergency, undeclared backup stash of materials and a secret cadre. If there was, and even some of it survives, there will still be a race for the bomb — except the bomb, or bombs, will appear in a fractured, unstable, justifiably paranoid region in a state of civil war. An entirely new nightmare with consequences far beyond Netanyahu and Trump’s terms, or even lifetimes.

Dimi Reider an Israeli journalist and editor, co-founder of  +972 Magazine, founding editor of the Lead, and a senior fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley

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