Hubris And His Father’s Word — Netanyahu Always Saw War With Iran As His Destiny

-Analysis-

BERLIN — A former close adviser once likened Benjamin Netanyahu to a ship’s captain navigating a small vessel across a broad, storm-tossed river. The boat — Israel — is no heavy-duty ferry like the global superpower of the United States, capable of plowing straight through the waves of world affairs. The captain of Israel must constantly adjust to shifting political winds and currents, and so his path often appears erratic, even chaotic. But in truth, the longtime aide claimed, Netanyahu always knows exactly where he wants to land — and he never takes his eyes off that destination.

Of course, that’s a rather sugar-coated portrait of Israel’s prime minister, a piece of political PR. Yet in one respect, it may ring true: With the recent strike against Iran, Netanyahu may have finally reached the point he’s long aimed for — the goal he’s pursued with relentless focus through all his political maneuvers.

How long this war will last, how effectively it will damage Iran’s nuclear program and missile stockpiles, and what impact it will have on the balance of power across the Middle East — all that remains uncertain. Even Israel’s own war objectives are not fully clear. Is this truly about disarmament, or is regime change in Tehran — toppling the Islamist dictatorship that has ruled since 1979 — the ultimate aim?

One thing, however, is beyond doubt: Netanyahu’s decision to target Iran directly and aggressively aligns perfectly with convictions he has held for decades. To him, the regime in Tehran — and especially the prospect of it acquiring nuclear weapons — represents an existential threat to Israel and the Jewish people, the risk of another Holocaust. In Netanyahu’s eyes, the world has long underestimated this danger, and ignored his warnings like those of a tiresome prophet no one wanted to hear. Now, at last, he has the chance to confront his most feared and hated enemy with force.

Churchill, his guiding star

“The hardest decision any leader has to make,” Netanyahu declared in the early hours last Friday, just after launching strikes on Iran, “is thwarting danger before it is fully materialized. Nearly a century ago, facing the Nazis, a generation of leaders failed to act in time.” The result, he continued, was World War II — with 60 million dead, including 6 million Jews. Under his leadership, he said, Israel would not repeat the mistake of appeasement, the cowardly and futile attempt to placate evil.

Netanyahu didn’t openly compare himself to Winston Churchill, the man who famously resisted appeasement — but he didn’t need to. He has often named Churchill, the indomitable British wartime leader, as one of his personal heroes.

Still, many will wonder whether this rhetoric — likening Iran’s rulers to Nazis — is even meant to be taken seriously. Isn’t it more plausible to suspect Netanyahu of acting from ulterior questionable, self-serving motives? After all, he’s currently on trial in Israel for corruption, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of war crimes. If there’s a politician in the world whose middle name could be “credibility problems,” it might well be Netanyahu.

What better way to delay the day of reckoning than to keep stirring up fresh conflict?

He heads a governing coalition that would likely fall apart the moment the guns fall silent. That collapse could cost him not only his office but also his freedom. So what better way to delay the day of reckoning than to keep stirring up fresh conflict? And isn’t a confrontation with Iran — framed as a noble mission to deny weapons of mass destruction to a rogue theocracy — an almost perfect distraction from the humanitarian and political disaster in Gaza?

Until just days ago, Netanyahu’s name was synonymous with the war in Gaza — a campaign that likely killed tens of thousands of civilians and during which Israel withheld humanitarian aid for weeks. A global wave of outrage and condemnation was building, even steadfast allies like Germany began to waver. Polls in Israel showed the war was deeply unpopular and that most citizens preferred a ceasefire and the return of the remaining hostages from Hamas. And then — right then — Netanyahu strikes Iran? A country with few friends and a regime so odious that bombing it might just rehabilitate the reputation of a deeply discredited politician?

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to find the timing suspicious.

Decades in the making

It’s entirely possible that Netanyahu’s war order was driven, at least in part, by less-than-pure motives. But it would be too simplistic to reduce his decision to personal interest or political scheming. On the issue of Iran, the prime minister likely has the overwhelming backing of the Israeli public. There’s broad national consensus that Iran’s regime must not get its hands on a nuclear bomb, that something must be done about its missiles — and preferably, its entire rule.

As the author and historian Daniel Gordis — no fan of Netanyahu — recently wrote: “While it seemed in 2023 and 2024 that Israel was at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the north, Israelis came to understand that both were ultimately instruments of the Iranian regime. Israel was under attack from, and at war with, the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Rallying support for a counterattack doesn’t take much effort.

Netanyahu invoked a prophetic voice: his own father, historian Benzion Netanyahu.

Netanyahu didn’t begin his crusade against Iran when he found himself in today’s tangle of legal, political and strategic troubles. As early as 1993, still a member of parliament and years away from his first term as prime minister, he wrote in an op-ed: “The greatest danger to Israel’s existence does not come from the Arab states — it comes from Iran.” It was a prescient assessment, given Iran’s current leadership role among anti-Israeli forces. But the prediction he made at the time — namely, that Iran would have the bomb by 1999 — proved incorrect.

His long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear ambitions even led him to do what most Israeli leaders avoid at all costs: clash openly with a U.S. president. In 2015, when Barack Obama sought a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program — one Netanyahu considered dangerously naive — he circumvented the White House, accepted an invitation from Congress, and delivered a fiery speech to both chambers denouncing the accord. “This deal doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he warned. “It paves it.”

A new political mood

Netanyahu couldn’t stop the deal. But by risking Obama’s wrath and a rupture with half of America — the Democratic Party — he showed how deadly serious he considered the Iranian threat. 

In doing so, he not only went against the U.S., but also against his own security establishment. Between 2009 and 2012, long before that congressional showdown, Netanyahu led a tough battle for a military strike on Iran, but was thwarted by an unlikely alliance: not only the Americans and Israeli President Shimon Peres, but also Israel’s own military chiefs, intelligence leaders and senior ministers.

Back then — before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — Israel was in a different place. It was cautious and defensive. A preemptive strike seemed reckless. There were fears about Hezbollah’s rockets (now a lesser concern), and doubt about whether success was possible without U.S. support (still unresolved). That Netanyahu is now able to wage the war he was once denied speaks not only to a more pliant cabinet and command structure, but also to a shift in the country’s strategic mindset — a mood that sees waiting as riskier than acting, even when the consequences are murky.

At the heart of this all is Netanyahu’s political identity: the Iran threat, the specter of another Holocaust, the conviction that action must come before annihilation. It’s central to his worldview and deeply rooted in history — and, in his case, in family.

Legacy, bloodline, and warning signs

In late March, at a Jerusalem conference on fighting antisemitism, Netanyahu delivered a speech that revealed just how deeply he feels bound to a certain legacy. The event had sparked criticism for including far-right guests, but the prime minister ignored the controversy and got straight to the point.

“After the Holocaust,” he said, “people claimed that few, if any, foresaw its horrors. That’s simply not true.”

He cited Zionist pioneers Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, both of whom had warned of looming catastrophe well before the Nazis’ murder campaign began. Then he turned to the argument he would later use to justify attacking Iran: One must not wait for danger to fully unfold; one must anticipate and preempt it.

To the surprise of many, Netanyahu invoked one more prophetic voice: his own father, historian Benzion Netanyahu. “He was 23 years old,” the prime minister said, “when he wrote what now looks like a stunning prediction.” Netanyahu then read aloud a passage in which his father had already used the word “Holocaust” to describe what awaited the Jewish people. “Holocaust,” his father had written.

The believer

Benzion Netanyahu, who died in 2012 at the age of 102, is essential to understanding the Israeli leader. Critics often speculate that Benjamin lived in the shadow of his older brother Yoni, the heroic officer killed in Entebbe in 1976. But whatever sibling dynamics may have shaped him, one influence is clear: the father’s view of Jewish history had a profound effect on the son.

Benzion’s research focused on medieval Spanish Jewry — a thriving culture abruptly destroyed in 1492 when Jews were expelled from Spain. One of its prominent figures, a high-ranking official, had written mere months earlier that things had never been better for Jews. That blindness, that trust in false security, that refusal to believe a civilizational collapse could be imminent — that, Benzion argued, was the fatal flaw of the Jewish diaspora. It left Jews defenseless, time and again, culminating in the Holocaust.

The ability to recognize danger in time is a precondition for survival.

Benjamin Netanyahu has fully embraced this diagnosis. In a 2021 interview, reflecting on his father’s work, he remarked: “The ability to recognize danger in time is a precondition for survival. It could be a fly that sees a shadow and flees, or a nation of people. The Jews lost that ability.”

Have they regained it? the interviewer asked. Netanyahu’s reply: Yes — but the danger is still there. “Iran says it will destroy us. They are building weapons of mass destruction.” And still, he added, there are those who downplay the threat.

Recognizing danger

For all his shapeshifting and opportunism, for all the legitimate concerns about a man who governs with extremists and may need perpetual war to stay in power — on Iran, Netanyahu appears to be acting out of deep conviction. This issue has trailed him through his entire career; it is entwined with his worldview and sense of history.

And let’s not forget the risk: Normally a master of delay and tactical ambiguity, Netanyahu acted without knowing the scope of U.S. backing or the impact Iranian retaliation might have on Israeli morale. Whatever else one says, this move took guts.

This is a battle he sees as existential — a fight to the finish.

That doesn’t make it wise. Passionate beliefs can be just as misleading as cynical politics. If Netanyahu sees Iran’s regime as a Hitlerian evil, will he be able to set realistic goals for this war? Officially, Israel’s aim is to slow down Iran’s nuclear development and cripple its missile program. But Netanyahu has also spoken of regime collapse as a possible outcome: “That could certainly happen,” he told Fox News, “because the regime is very weak.”

But is such a regime collapse really just a possible side effect of the war — or is it the true objective? When someone casts a conflict in such sweeping historical and moral terms, as Netanyahu has done with Iran, it becomes almost impossible to settle for merely containing the enemy. This is a battle he sees as existential — a fight to the finish. And with that come serious dangers: the risks of overreach, of losing sight of reality in the heat of conviction.

“Men make history” — so the old saying goes. It’s a dated, patriarchal notion, and the results of such history-making are often dubious at best. But in the case of Netanyahu and his war with Iran, the phrase might just ring true once again.