Why Netanyahu wins regardless

Mairav Zonszein, NY Times  -   Benjamin Netanyahu has spent much of his political life trying to make war with Iran seem not only inevitable but overdue. Thus, for the Israeli prime minister, the latest conflict was a victory the moment it began. Not because every consequence is good for Israel, but because he can sell almost every conceivable result as proof that he was right all along: that Iran had to be confronted, that force was unavoidable and that delay would only have made the threat more treacherous.

Mr. Netanyahu does not need a clean victory — he just needs a durable narrative. This is not just about distracting Israeli voters when they head to the polls this year. This is also about cementing an Israeli national security doctrine that always trumps diplomacy. He needs Israelis talking about Tehran rather than Oct. 7, about existential enemies rather than political accountability or the unresolved disaster in Gaza — where, after nearly two and a half years of indiscriminate destruction, Hamas still remains — or the crisis in Lebanon, where the renewed conflict with Hezbollah shows no signs of waning.

A war with Iran does not erase those failures, but it does slide them into the background. It also moves the political conversation back onto emotional and political terrain where Mr. Netanyahu has always felt strongest: using fear with the claim that only he truly grasps the scale of the threat to Israel from Iran, and the (empty) promise that he can remove it through force.