Could the Iran war keep Netanyahu in power for longer?

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted to attack Iran for his entire political

career.

And he finally got his way with Donald Trump in the White House, within Israel there's

huge support for the war.

So how could it impact Netanyahu's political future?

I'm Imran Khan and you're listening to the Inside Story podcast where we dissect, analyze,

and help define major political stories.

Let's bring in our guest Alan Pinkhouse is a former ambassador and council general of

Israel in New York.

He joins us from Tel Aviv.

In West Jerusalem is Mitchell Barak, founder of Kivun Research, Strategy and Communications

and a former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And Aliyah Shainlan is a political consultant and pollster based in Tel Aviv, a warm welcome

to you all.

I want to start with Mitchell first.

Mitchell it's often been said that it's a false errand to bet against Benjamin Netanyahu

that he is a survivor.

But how's his war going so far?

He hasn't got the bump in the polls that he thought he might have, right?

Well, I remember after he lost becoming Prime Minister and and Bennett became Prime Minister,

I got an urgent phone call from one of the leading newspapers in the world working on Mr.

Netanyahu's obituary.

They wanted to have it on file in case something happened to him.

I said it's way too early to rate his real obituary or his political obituary.

And that was a few years ago.

So that is correct.

Don't bet against him.

He's not finished.

On the other hand, we don't know what's going to be the main issue as we get to the election.

What it is sure is that we will have an election either in October or before, but let's just

look back at the war that we won against our end last June.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, when both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu say, we've

really set them back and we won this war.

And maybe a few weeks after that victory, he could have won handily, but we're already

almost a year after that, and the situation has changed.

So my point is, we definitely don't know what's going to be the main issue when we have

the election.

And we still don't know when we do have the election.

Now, Daliad, there seems to be a disconnect, though, right?

Because I'm looking at polls.

One of them says that 38% of people trust Netanyahu, but that's not a high figure.

But there seems to be an 80% at least approval rating on the war, so how do you explain

that?

Yeah, well, I think there is a disconnect.

In fact, it's in the Israeli mind because across the board, among Israeli Jews, we should

specify because the Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel are two-thirds opposed to this war,

but among the Jewish population, there is, as some of your street interviews showed, very

high support for the war and a very, very widespread conviction that Iran is essentially

the source of all major threats against Israel.

It is the source of all instability in the Middle East, and there is no other way to deal

with Iran other than military action.

That has been a message that Netanyahu has been promoting for years and decades, and

the Israeli public very much believes that that's the case.

Again, not just that Iran is a threat, but that the only way to deal with it is through

military action.

And so they are highly supportive of this war.

It goes across, left, right, and center lines.

Although there are differences between left, right, and center, but right now, a majority

of all of those camps are supporting the war.

Nevertheless, the biggest disconnect you can see is when asked if they trust Netanyahu

is handling of the war.

And there, in the first week, we saw about 64 percent among the total population who did

trust him.

It's a little bit lower in some surveys, just over 50 percent, but only when it comes

to the management of the war in Iran.

And that co-exists with the data point that you just pointed out that only 38 percent

trust him in general.

And that is only a four point rise from the previous survey by the same Institute for National

Security Studies, which was just 34 percent.

It's nothing like the kind of wartime rally that you would expect to see around a prime

minister.

And so, as Mitchell certainly pointed out, we don't know where things are going.

I would say it's never good to bet against Netanyahu or for him in this case, because polls

have been steadfastly against him for the most part throughout the term of this government.

And let's also remember, he did not actually get any significant bump.

His coalition parties as a whole saw almost no rise after the war, the first war with Israel

and Iran in June of 2025.

So we don't really know what to expect, but we don't have evidence of any rise at the

political level yet for him.

Alan, I want to bring you in here.

Where is the opposition here?

Do they have an opportunity to take an opposing view that's going to be popular in Israel?

Or does that not exist anymore?

Well, they could have asked questions.

They could have questioned the policy.

They could have questioned the doctrine.

They could have 10 years ago questioned Mr. Netanyahu's determination that Iran is an

existential threat.

I'm just putting it on the table.

I'm not saying this is what I necessarily believe.

They could have rallied against him when he prodded Trump in 2018 to unilaterally leave

the Iran nuclear deal, so-called war, also known as the JCPOA.

Yet on this issue, there's no opposition.

And this corresponds directly to what Dalia just said about disconnects.

On the one hand, people, they vow that they dislike Netanyahu and they oppose Netanyahu

when they hate this Netanyahu, and they detest Netanyahu and they go out and they rally

and protest and demonstrate against Netanyahu.

But on the issue of Iran, they seem to be like a herd of sheep that just go along with

each other and follow each other's steps.

I have not seen since the beginning of, well, not just this four or three weeks ago or

18 days ago to be exact, but even going back to June 2025.

By the way, Mr. Netanyahu's policy on Iran is perfectly legitimate.

We can argue the marriage.

We can argue the pros and cons.

We can argue the political wisdom, but that's beside the point.

Since June 2025, per your question, Imran, I have not seen one opposition leader raise

the question of, is this smart strategy?

Is this what needs to be done?

Is this really what Israel needs to do?

What are the consequences?

What is the end game?

What does Israel want to get out of it?

Instead, you see, as you presented in the footage just before we came on, you see opposition

leaders, you know, Yalapid and Yalagolan, basically like parakeets, like, you know, reciting

what Netanyahu's talking points.

So either they think he's right, which isn't a legitimate, or they're just clueless

and spineless.

I don't know, but the fact of the matter is on this issue, forget public opinion, I'm

talking about the justification for the war in Iran, on this issue, there seems to be

a wide consensus that, in my mind, is intriguing and surprising.

Mitchell, I want to bring you in here.

It's good for Netanyahu that he has this kind of almost uniform universal support from

all political parties for his war against Iran, but it's not good for democracy, for those

voices not to be heard.

Now, the question is to you very simple, is it legitimately that they support him or

they just too afraid of the political deal-making that has to go on to form a government to really

speak out?

Well, I think in general, there's a feeling in Israel, one war at war, you've got to stick

with the program and give backing to the government and the country, you know, who's fighting

this war is most of our kids, meaning anyone who's middle age who has, you know, teenagers

in early 20s and 30s, year-olds, their kids are, our kids are fighting these wars.

So you don't want to be a criticizing when we're at battle.

That's definitely number one.

I wouldn't put too much weight on what they're saying now because now is the time to be

unified or at least not to confront or to be against what's going on.

As soon as it's finished, those same people are going to say, Netanyahu did a fantastic

job and therefore we don't need him anymore.

He spent his whole life warning us about Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the terrorism

that they do.

And you know what?

He spent 15 years in office and he took care of the problem.

Thank you so much.

Now it's time to move on.

So that's probably going to happen.

And once we've finished, the question is, how long is this going to happen?

And I think that one of the bigger issues coming up, there's two bigger issues coming up

that the opposition is not talking about.

And that is, one, we really are not in control here.

We're doing what the United States is timetable.

And also we have to look at public opinion in the United States and elsewhere.

This also, the diplomatic component has to be included in the assessment of the opposition

in Israeli citizens.

And it's not at this point.

Well, that's actually a very good point.

It was a question I was going to bring to Dalia anyway.

Let's talk about international public opinion there.

Once again, it's that word again, disconnect between how Jewish Israelis are thinking about

the war against Iran.

And for example, American Jews are thinking about the war against Iran.

This Israel losing considerable support from the international Jewish community because

of Netanyahu's policies over the years.

And that's just been compounded now by the war in Iran.

Yes, to a large extent, that's true.

But I just want to go back very quickly before I answer that and express that one more voice

in Israel from the opposition that we have not mentioned yet.

And that is the opposition party's led by Aiman Odeh, who has been openly opposed to

the war.

And we put that out there because it's not entirely accurate to say that no opposition

voice was expressed any criticism or questions about this war.

It's just that so often in Israeli political discourse, we only think of the Jewish or Zionist

opposition parties.

So that's certainly something we should remember.

In terms of public opinion and the dissonant, yes, absolutely.

What's interesting is that American Jews have had a negative, a net negative attitude towards

Netanyahu for some years now, even before the general American public turned against

Netanyahu.

And that's because they were following much more closely when Netanyahu, it really started

during the first Trump administration when Netanyahu, well, actually, I should say even

it really started in the Obama years, you know, when after Netanyahu came to Congress,

went around the back of the American president, that began a process of less favorable support

from American Jews.

And that process continued.

And so now, I think there's a perception among American Jews that Netanyahu makes the

state of Israel into a place that looks bad and maybe is bad, something they can't relate

to.

I shouldn't say bad entirely because I think most American Jews still feel very strongly,

you know, pro-Israel on some level.

But the criticism of what the government is doing is very powerful.

And I think that they tend to focus all of that blame on Netanyahu.

And that's why he has already lost American Jews over time.

In terms of general opinion and general American opinion, we can go beyond American Jews

because the American public, of course, was a majority against starting a war in Iran

under, you know, that what Trump has done.

Now, the fact is it wasn't an overwhelming majority, and more importantly for Trump,

the overwhelming majority of Republican voters does support the war, certainly after

it started, which I think, you know, sort of went against these expectations of a big

split within the Republican Party and the Maga split.

And so we went against some of the prominent voices in the Maga elite, Tucker Carlson

and Nick Fuentes, Joe Rogan, who were very critical of this and have been.

But the public so far, Republican voters, at least as they're expressing themselves

in surveys, have shown quite a strong consensus in favor of what Trump is doing because they're

so loyal to Trump.

And so, you know, we talk about majority opinion being against it.

First of all, that is evening out some of what impulse in the U.S. in the second week

of the war.

But also, I think Trump primarily is interested in his base to begin with.

So I don't know if that will, you know, be something that he sees as a constraint.

Alan, I want to bring you here.

You were shaking your head there at the mention of Aiman Oday.

He was a, you know, Palestinian Israeli member of the Kinesa, a very serious man and a man

with a voice.

Do you not think he has that voice, or am I getting this wrong?

Oh, no, no, he definitely does.

I was shaking my head because I think our average viewer, if I know our average viewer,

thinks of, you know, the Arab vote in Israel, though it should constitute 20 percent.

In the Knesset, it is represented by 10 percent, even less than that.

So while Dalia is technically absolutely right in pointing to Aiman Oday as an opposition

to this, Mr. Netanyahu, for many years, for many years has been making a compelling

intellectual case about it alone.

You can disagree, and I disagree with him.

Opposition, the Jewish Israeli opposition has never met the challenge.

They never confronted him on that issue.

I want to go to Mitchell Barack, Mitchell, this idea that there are criticisms coming from

the international Jewish community against pretty much Netanyahu himself.

But that doesn't seem to have any impact on his popularity at home.

Why is that?

Well, first of all, I don't think the, it's such a significant group of international

and or American Jews.

The majority of them are solidly behind this.

There are Israeli policies that are not popular with them.

There are those that are more to the left of center that are not so comfortable, but

when it comes to support for Israel at the end of the day, I think that, you know, we

have that Jewish community solidly behind us.

We definitely have voices of dissent, and that's fine.

It doesn't have really any impact here because we're living in here.

We're in the bomb shelters.

We're in the bomb shelters in Jerusalem already twice today.

You know, we're dealing with this, so it's nice for anyone, whether they're citizens

anywhere in the world of any religion to be against this war.

But you know what?

Netanyahu has been crying wolf now with the Islamic Republic of Iran for probably ten

years solid.

And you know what?

Now's the time to kill the wolf, and that's what he's doing.

And so everyone here is behind that, and it doesn't matter what criticism there is,

and it doesn't matter who's against us.

And even if we lose support among political friends in the United States and elsewhere,

at the end, most of us here believe it's an existential threat because the Iranians

have been saying for many years that they want to wipe out Israel, and that one day Israel

will not exist, and Israel has no right to exist.

So that's fine.

Right now everyone is, the Israel is doing the job to get rid of that, so it doesn't really

matter what anyone says.

But you have to think about like, you know, the idea that there is a root cause of all

of this.

Iran wouldn't be Iran if the occupation wasn't taking place.

If the occupation of the Palestinians was as brutal as possible, I mean, you can laugh,

but you get rid of the occupation.

Is that really their main, you know, I know the BLO was founded in 1964 before the occupation.

So the Palestinians can return to Jaffa and Jerusalem and Ramlan, all these other places.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not concerned with the Palestinian issue.

It's not why they support terror all over the world because of the occupation, really.

Right.

I mean, that's, you know, they're against the United States also.

You've made a point visibly, but do you want to come to our other guests as well?

The last one from Britain, there were 10 attacks carried out by them.

It doesn't have to do with the Palestinians, you know, it's great that you're now saying

we caused the Iranian regime to want to annihilate.

The occupation is a big part of it.

I mean, I don't want to get jump in here just one second, one second, Mitchell, come on.

You've been on the show and all, what do you think of Mitchell saying?

Well, I, you know, I'm not here to argue with Mitchell, but I know where he's coming from.

This self-righteous, pontificating, sanctimonious, you know, interpretation of history.

We probably agree at 90 percent of the issues, but on 10 percent, he reverts back to going

in a Tanyao parakeet.

Oh, no, this is not about the occupation.

Oh, no, the PLO was formed in 1964.

That's before occupation, yes, Mr. Bad, but it's after what the Palestinians consider

is not about, which I'm okay with, but you need to recognize that they don't think it's

okay.

And as for the Iran existential threat, stop using it as if this is 1938 Nazi Germany

like your mentor, Mr. Nizanyahu does, because it is not, it is a sign of weakness.

You're forgetting how strong we are.

You look at what we're doing militarily in Iran and you have evidence, proof, and irrefutable

demonstration of how strong we are yet you still play the victim.

They're out to get us.

They're out to get us.

I'm going to stop you that because we are running out of time to circumvent the Palestinian

issue.

Let's be honest about this.

Okay.

And I want to bring in Dahlia here.

Listen, Dahlia, I want to give you one of the kind of street level opinions that I kept

hearing when I was based out of Jerusalem, which was Netanyahu needs a forever war just

to keep him in power, that this is the be all and end all of that.

And that was coming from, you know, the streets of Tel Aviv, it was coming from the streets

of West Jerusalem.

So it was an Israeli opinion.

Do you have any sympathy with that argument?

Do I have personal 60 argument, in other words, do I support it?

Do I think it's correct?

I mean, I think we have to get away from a lot of these kind of very, sorry to say this

because I really respect all of my colleagues here, but I think that there's, you know,

so much of Israeli discussions about politics, you know, becomes very reductionist.

And let's just admit that this is a lot more complex and some of this is multi-causal.

Netanyahu truly believes that the Iranian regime needs to be restrained and that it can

only happen militarily.

He truly believes that.

You know, I think that the threat that it can annihilate Israel is completely overblown

and yet there is a threat.

I think the biggest thing that Netanyahu has brought to this is the idea that it can only

happen militarily.

Is he saying that purely in order to stay in power?

Well, he truly believes it.

Because he wants to stay in power at all costs, absolutely.

Is Iran exploiting the Palestinian cause for its own mobilization so that it can expand

its power or what it sees as build its strategic depth through its proxies over the years?

That's also true.

I do not believe that Iran's, you know, aggressive posture in the Middle East over all of these

years is purely because of the occupation.

That will be completely reductionist.

And yet the occupation is a very significant mobilizing factor, I think, in anger at Israel

around the Middle East that helps it rally support for its proxying networks over the

age.

All of these things are true.

And I do think that Netanyahu, of course, wants to stay in power.

And this is also a primary ideology that he has.

But I think that the main thing is that Israelis have been very, you know, very broadly

convinced over all of these years that there is no other option that Iran will always

try to destroy Israel and that there is no such thing as diplomacy, which is factually

incorrect because there was diplomacy, there was a nuclear agreement called the JCPOA

and it was working.

Okay.

Was it perfect?

There are no perfect solutions.

But it was working.

Iran was in compliance.

There were international inspectors and uranium enrichment remained at 3%.

Ever since President Trump in this first term pulled out of that deal, the situation has

become immeasurably worse.

Iran took a much more aggressive posture enabling and trying to build up its proxies to be stronger

and more emboldened, accelerated the ballistic missile program and accelerated uranium enrichment.

And so I failed to see why in all of this competitive, we are running out of time, we are focusing

on and water possibility.

We are running out of time.

I want to come to both Allen and Mitchell Brock for a very quick answer because we are

running out of time.

This idea that Netanyahu wants to stay in power, Mitchell, that's, you know, he's got

to be damaging for Israeli democracy.

Look, at the end of the day, you know, I don't think anyone really wants ongoing war

and certainly not after the last two and a half years that we've experienced.

What I think we're missing here, this is not about staying in power for Netanyahu.

Whether he wins an ex-election, retires, wins and then leaves, this is going to be his

legacy.

I mean, think about the last two and a half, three years.

We had the worst defeat on October 7th.

Sorry, but I'm going to leave it there at legacy because that's not important.

That's quite important.

This is how we will remember Netanyahu, how the Middle East has changed.

Allen, very quick.

We think.

Allen, very quickly, do you think you need to water stay in power?

Yes.

You said quickly.

Yes.

Certainly, a solid on.

Certainly a solid on.

Certainly a solid on.

Certainly a solid on.

I want to thank all of you.

I want to thank all of you.

I want to thank all of you.

I want to thank Allen, Peter, Stylia, Schneidling and Mitchell, this episode is produced by

Durban Fleming, Alexandra Bias, Maria Kavan, Trishvilly and Nikki Duda.

The sound was by Amanda Kishore and the programme was edited by Venetia Belly Lath, Catherine

Nuhon and Joey Fries.

You can catch every episode on the Insight Story podcast and don't forget to subscribe

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Thank you for listening and tune in on Wednesday, our next edition.

Coming up on the take.

We get the view of the US's really war on Iran from a university professor watching

it up close into Iran.

That's the take by Al Jazeera.

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