Will Israel's war on Iran help Netanyahu stay in power?

In the wake of Israel’s escalation with Iran, the exact nature of the damage it inflicted on Tehran’s nuclear capabilities is unclear.

But the war also served a more personal goal for Benjamin Netanyahu: staying in power.

It came as his unpopular far-right coalition government faces numerous challenges, while he himself is embroiled in corruption charges over bribery and fraud.

Over the past two years, Netanyahu has faced mass protests within Israeli society over security failures, particularly those leading to Hamas’ attack on 7 October 2023 and the government’s failures to bring home Israeli hostages.

In the 12 days of war with Iran, which Israel launched despite dubious evidence that Tehran was even close to building a nuclear weapon, Netanyahu proclaimed victory over Tehran.

Now, he may look to reap the political benefits of the war. First of all, speculation emerged that Netanyahu and his inner circle were weighing the possibility of snap elections, which would also run alongside plans to normalise ties with Saudi Arabia and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to Channel 12 News.

Moreover, a poll by the Maariv newspaper found that the war increased support for Netanyahu's Likud party.

“Roughly a week after the war with Iran began and in light of the military's achievements, Netanyahu is scoring a major political victory,” Maariv reported.

Around 82% of Jewish-Israelis supported the airstrikes on Iran, according to a poll by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, signalling widespread support for the war.

Although the immediate support for Likud wasn’t quite enough to form a government - Likud is still in a coalition with six other right-wing parties - it contrasts with another Maariv poll conducted just before the conflict with Iran, which suggested the opposition bloc in the Knesset was slightly more popular than Netanyahu’s coalition.

Despite the small bump in popularity, experts are sceptical over whether it was an endorsement of Netanyahu, rather than for the government’s actions.

“Support for the war has been high, but Netanyahu hasn’t gained much personally. Likud’s rise in the polls is only modest,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster and analyst, told The New Arab.

“He’s using the Iran threat to reinforce his image as Israel’s indispensable leader, but that’s a well-worn tactic that he has relied on throughout much of his political career.”

Scheindlin added that while there’s been a modest bump, support may change in the foreseeable future once the impact on Iran can be more easily ascertained.

A fragile coalition government

It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been hanging onto power by a thread. Less than 24 hours before he ordered strikes on Iran, his governing coalition narrowly survived a Knesset vote that would have dissolved his government, owing to a last-minute deal with his coalition allies.

That close call underscored the fragility of his government.

There were a multitude of reasons why Netanyahu launched attacks on Iran. The renewed US-Iran negotiations over the latter’s nuclear program may have given Tehran a false sense of security, and Netanyahu likely felt he had the upper hand after Israel’s weakening of Hamas and Hezbollah in 2024, two of Tehran’s most significant regional partners.

But two major ambitions have always characterised Netanyahu’s career: staying in power and defeating Iran. And the strikes served both, intertwining the narrative of Iran as an existential threat with his political survival.

“Bibi perceived that Israel had a unique window of opportunity to smash its biggest enemy. The fact that this was good for him in domestic politics - and also in his own troubles with courts - was a cherry on top,” Max Rodenbeck, Israel-Palestine Project Director at the International Crisis Group, told The New Arab.

“Of course, he is a canny politician. But this Iran war has been the culmination of a lifelong obsession. He sees himself in grandiose terms as a historic leader of the Jewish people, and he thinks he has just saved them from the next Holocaust.”

Aside from his desire to secure enough popularity to stay in power, Netanyahu has scored other wins.

On 29 June, the court agreed to postpone Netanyahu’s testimony scheduled for this week, after he appeared in person alongside the heads of Mossad and IDF Intelligence to argue that national security concerns required a delay.

While next week’s hearings remain scheduled for now, the development suggests that Netanyahu is buying time, while also reshaping the legal terrain in his favour.

“Netanyahu understood the impact of all this on his place in history. Over time, he also understood that the ‘success’ of the genocide he initiated in Gaza will not mitigate his standing and that the only way back into history was by successfully attacking Iran,” Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, told The New Arab.

“While we do not know this for sure, I think he received Trump’s support and willingness to use its bombers to attack several nuclear facilities before Israel began the attack against Iran.”

Both directly and indirectly, the war has played a role in boosting Netanyahu’s government.

International pressure

At the same time, Netanyahu continues to face mounting pressure abroad. While Western allies like France, the UK, and Germany have signalled continued military support and voiced Israel’s “right to self-defence” against Iran, there’s increasing discomfort with Netanyahu himself.

His legal troubles, meanwhile, are still festering, and he remains the subject of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court in November 2024. Political, legal, and societal pressure is also mounting within Western nations over their arms supplies to Israel.

Western capitals, however, may have experienced a reduced appetite to limit their military support as Israel came under retaliatory missile fire from Iran.

“Netanyahu genuinely believes in what he’s doing - he saw Iran as vulnerable and acted,” Chris Doyle, Director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), told The New Arab.

“But while the campaign may have bought him time politically and distracted from his legal troubles, it hasn’t necessarily won him a warm embrace internationally. Many leaders still see him as escalatory, especially over Gaza.”

He added that support from allies, including arms sales, will become harder to justify if the situation in Gaza remains unchanged.

Moreover, Netanyahu’s coalition government had already expressed outrage at the prospect of Western nations recognising Palestine as a state.

That prospect was due to be discussed at a UN conference co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia in June, but the conference was postponed due to the focus on the war with Iran.

It is now scheduled for July - further evidence that the war may have bought Netanyahu time on multiple fronts.

“A few things have happened since Iran’s defeat. First, Netanyahu’s standing in Israel has considerably improved and I will not be surprised if he calls snap elections,” said Neve Gordon.

“Second, it seems that Trump is now pressuring Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to pardon Netanyahu in his corruption trials, and we will have to see how that pans out.”

He also noted that various militaries across the globe may be in awe of Israel’s military successes against Hezbollah and Iran, and that this could influence foreign leaders, ultimately boosting Israel’s image on the global stage.

“These wars have cost Israel a lot, but they have also boosted its arms and intelligence exports exponentially, so at the end of the day, it might turn out to be financially beneficial,” added Gordon.

While Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire on 23 June, after the US’ own airstrikes hit Iranian nuclear sites, put a pause to any further escalation, they haven’t extinguished Netanyahu’s ambitions to continue rallying against Iran.

Even if the spotlight temporarily shifted from Gaza, the war there remains brutally violent, and it will be hard for international powers to ignore Israel’s continued assault.

Damning new reports indicate that Israeli soldiers have fired on civilians collecting aid from the US and Israel-backed ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’, which has been widely criticised by humanitarian organisations and the UN.

Meanwhile, attacks on the West Bank have continued as the Netanyahu-led government moves to consolidate control and push towards annexation of the illegally occupied territory.

The war with Iran appears to have emboldened these policies, giving the government more political space to intensify its assault.

But even if the Iran war buys Netanyahu some time, the pressure on his government, both international and domestic, will become increasingly hard for him to ignore.

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is a journalist and researcher who focuses on conflict, geopolitics, and humanitarian issues in the Middle East and North Africa.

Follow him on Twitter: @jfentonharvey