Benjamin Netanyahu has resorted to increasingly alarmist rhetoric and reportedly put pressure on Israel’s military to take action against Iran as his far-right coalition narrowly trails in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s close-run elections.
The Israeli prime minister posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear mushroom cloud destroying Tel Aviv, telling Israeli voters to choose him or risk nuclear annihilation.
“Anyone who cares about their own physical existence, that of their family, and their loved ones should have a trembling hand before voting for [the opposition],” he wrote in a social media post about Iran’s nuclear programme.
Israel’s Channel ۱۲ news reported that the prime minister and the armed forces chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, clashed in recent days over a directive to the military which could “potentially spark an immediate conflagration with Iran at a very sensitive juncture”, by provoking a miscalculation by Iran.
Zamir is reported to have requested the directive, the details of which were not specified, to be presented to him in writing.
Netanyahu denied the report, and the defence ministry later denied any intention to carry out military operations against Iran.
On Monday however, CNN reported that Netanyahu had tried to convince Donald Trump to launch a renewed assault on Iran in recent weeks, renewing the war both men started in February.
The report, confirming an earlier account in the Financial Times, said Trump had ruled out any such action until US congressional elections next week.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement on Monday that stopped well short of a denial of the press reports. It simply insisted that its decisions were based exclusively on “security, professional, objective and national considerations”.
Netanyahu’s warnings were a marked contrast with his triumphalism in the immediate wake of the wars on Iran that launched last year and this spring.
In March Netanyahu said Israeli and US strikes had destroyed Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and produce ballistic missiles, and in ۲۰۲۵ he claimed a “historic victory” over Iran that would stand for generations.
Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the opposition bloc and Netanyahu’s most likely challenger for the prime minister’s job, expressed his confidence in Zamir.
“We won’t allow the IDF to be turned into a pawn in Netanyahu’s survival campaign,” said Eisenkot, who is a retired general.
Most polls suggest the mainly centre-right opposition bloc led by Eisenkot is poised to win more seats in Israel’s Knesset than the Netanyahu coalition, but neither would be able to muster the ۶۱ seats necessary for a majority government.
The opposition would most likely be able to gather a majority and topple Netanyahu in coalition with parties representing Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, roughly a fifth of the population. But conservatives inside the Eisenkot bloc have ruled out such a coalition, raising the prospect of a minority government, another round of elections and a possible Netanyahu resurgence.
As the elections drew closer, Netanyahu framed the country’s choice as existential. He told Channel ۱۴, which has acted as lead cheerleader in the Israeli media for the prime minister, “there is a single fundamental issue here – our existence”.
He described the opposition bloc as the “left” in alliance with Palestinians, and enemies of the country.
“We see what is happening in Europe. The alliance between the left and Islam might destroy the state of Israel,” he said.
The main opposition parties are rightwing or centre-right, who share Netanyahu’s adamant opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and who have largely supported the war in Gaza. Some opposition leaders have ruled out any kind of political alliance with Palestinian Israeli parties, who could emerge from the elections holding the balance of power in the Knesset. Palestinians in the occupied territories do not have the vote.
The opposition bloc is held together more by its shared antipathy to Netanyahu, who has dominated the Israeli political scene over the past three decades, and veered increasingly towards authoritarianism, seeking to limit the independence of the judiciary and turn the police and internal security service, Shin Bet, into political tools.
The prime minister is also in the midst of a trial on corruption charges, and his legal jeopardy could increase if he loses his grip on power.
In the closing stages of the campaign, Netanyahu has also emphasised the overt support he enjoys from Donald Trump, who repeated his endorsement on Sunday in a social media post, saying “When you go to the Polls please remember that Bibi has been an outstanding warrior prime minister!”
The Israeli outlet Walla News reported that this repeat endorsement was a result of relentless pressure from Netanyahu’s office. It is unclear however, whether Trump’s support will carry any weight with the electorate. The US president’s earlier “total endorsement” on ۱۸ October made no visible difference to the polls.
In one survey, ۶۴% of Israelis questioned said it would not influence their vote, and ۱۷% said it made them less likely to back Netanyahu, against ۱۲% who said it had deepened their resolve to support Netanyahu’s Likud party.
In the closing stages of the closely fought campaign, Netanyahu has also forecast growing financial isolation, saying billions of dollars in annual military aid from the US would dry up soon, and drew a rare public rebuke from the central bank for a repeated claim that Israel could use cryptocurrencies to dodge escalating global sanctions.
“Cryptocurrencies cannot serve as a means to circumvent sanctions,” the Bank of Israel said on Sunday evening. “The right course for the Israeli economy is to maintain economic relations with our primary trading partners and to focus on preventing sanctions and their negative impact on the economy.”
Netanyahu had already laid out a forecast for a bleak, isolated future a year ago, when he said Israel might need to become a militarised “super Sparta”, then rowed back again in the face of fierce criticism from a horrified Israeli public.
His return to this rhetoric and the tactics of fear, particularly after unexpected losses for far-right allies in Serbia and Brazil, raised questions about whether the ultimate political survivor may finally be on the ropes.
Few among his allies or enemies expected his government to survive long after ۷ October, much less complete its term. But the majority of polls have been clear for more than two years that his current coalition looks set to lose its slim majority.
