To bank its gains after 12 brutal days it must turn off its ferocious war machine
Jun 24th 2025
THERE ARE immutable rules to Middle Eastern wars that not even Donald Trump can change. Once a ceasefire is announced, both sides rush to land one more blow. After the truce starts they sneak in a final volley. For ten hours after the president announced a ceasefire ending the 12-day Iran-Israel war, there were tit-for-tat strikes. By the time he got up on June 24th, Mr Trump had had enough, declaring on the White House lawn, “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing!” He then called Binyamin Netanyahu and read the riot act. Israel’s jets turned back.
Notwithstanding the smackdown, and providing the ceasefire holds, this is a moment for triumph for Israel’s prime minister. His country has won a degree of military dominance in the region that may exceed all previous peaks including the aftermath of the 1967 war. A country of 10m has air superiority over much of the Middle East. After a multi-front war with Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis and the apex enemy, Iran, they have all been humbled.
Yet Iran’s nuclear programme may have only been damaged rather than destroyed. And Israel now confronts a momentous choice: whether to embrace this steroidal, hyper-militarised vision or seek a path from endless war to stability. It must also decide if Mr Netanyahu, viewed by many Israelis as a toxic liability only weeks ago, should lead it, or whether he is a wartime prime minister whom voters evict at the pinnacle of his power.
He has warned about the “existential threat” from Iran’s nuclear programme for decades. Neither it nor its ballistic-missile effort have been completely destroyed, but they have been set back by months and probably years. The military achievement is defensive as well as offensive. Of 500-odd missiles fired by Iran at Israel, only 6% hit built-up areas, killing 28 people, far fewer than predicted. Iran has for decades expanded its missile and drone force, supplying them to proxies and Russia. The result has been a humiliation, to the quiet glee of its Arab neighbours.
What happens next will reflect the ambiguous status of Iran’s regime. It has deep vulnerabilities. Ordinary Iranians have been blanketed by internet blackouts and propaganda recounting victory. As the true picture begins to emerge, the regime’s authority may decay. Crippling sanctions may only fully be removed if it accepts a disarmament treaty on Mr Trump’s terms, although he has signalled that he will not object to Chinese purchases of Iranian oil. Iran’s proxy militias are in crisis and its project to coerce the region through them is over for now. Yet for all that the regime is still standing. During the war Mr Netanyahu called upon the Iranian people to “liberate” themselves. Seasoned Iran-watchers in Israel’s intelligence community now doubt that Iranians are about to take to the streets and believe regime change at this moment is unrealistic.
This prospect of a diminished and isolated but still-bristling Iran presents a long-term military dilemma for Israel. It still has dozens of missile launchers. And the regime has nuclear know-how and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, even if some of this may be inaccessible under the ruins of its Fordow and Isfahan facilities. It is quite possible in the long run that a nuclear push is revived.
One model for Israel is the maximalist, pre-emptive security policy it has adopted in recent months in Lebanon and Syria. That involves maintaining air superiority, with any stirring of a potential threat met with air strikes, and using proxy groups. In Syria, for example, Israel’s warplanes roam freely, conducting strikes every few weeks against armed groups, and it has expanded a buffer zone on the ground while courting the Druze minority.
The trouble is that this is not a sustainable approach in the case of Iran, which is 1,000km away and huge. Some 1,200 missions in 12 days have stretched the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to its limits. It has been an expensive war in terms of the consumption of jet fuel and guided munitions. Based on estimates from government economists, maintaining the campaign for a year would cost about 20% of Israel’s GDP. It is partially underwritten by America, which assists with defence and intelligence, and which may tire of constant war.
The maximalist vision of Israeli security also involves permanent low-level war in Gaza, at extraordinary human cost to Palestinians. After 21 months of fighting the Gazan death toll has hit a horrific 55,000, including civilians and combatants. The cumulative cost of the Gaza war to Israel exceeds 10% of the country’s GDP. The central bank reckons that even temporarily expanding the Gaza operation would cut growth further and raise the deficit by 2% of GDP, taking debt to 71% of GDP. Israel’s citizen army is weary of further mobilisation.
Mr Netanyahu said after the Iran ceasefire that “Israel has placed itself in the first rank of the world’s major powers”. But it lacks the scale to act as a permanent hegemon of the Middle East. That points to negotiations from a position of strength. Israel has pivoted before. After the 1973 war it made peace with Egypt in 1979. Today there are opportunities. Security officials accept that in order to maintain a watchful peace with Iran, the only sustainable option is a diplomatic agreement in which Iran accepts severe limitations on its nuclear and missile development. On June 24th the UN’s nuclear watchdog said it was prepared to resume inspections in Iran. It remains to be seen whether the only viable broker, the Trump administration, can impose a deal. It would take months of negotiations during which Israel will have to exercise patience. In Gaza, meanwhile, two weeks ago Israel and Hamas were close to agreeing to a ceasefire, which would have paused fighting for at least 60 days and perhaps led to a lasting truce. Israeli officials believe that, with Iran reeling, Hamas has been deprived of its most important backer and will be more desperate for a deal.
Any pivot from war to negotiation will be constrained by Israeli domestic politics. The far-right parties in Mr Netanyahu’s present coalition are against ending the war in Gaza, which they dream of resettling. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionism party, posted on social media: “Now with all force to Gaza to finish the job.” It is not yet clear if the hard-right would object to talks with Iran. Broader public opinion in Israel is more centrist but deeply sceptical about a two-state solution and wary of Israel’s adversaries. The share of Israelis who believe in a peaceful, independent Palestinian state has fallen from 50% in 2013 to just 21% now, according to Pew. Some 73% of Israelis supported the attacks on Iran.
Yet Mr Netanyahu, should he choose, may have accumulated the political capital to defy his radical partners and their designs of perpetual war and Gazan occupation, and to shift public opinion. Some within his Likud party believe he will take the opportunity to hold early elections, potentially even triggering a re-alignment of Israel’s political alliances. His Iran success could boost his dismal poll ratings and give him more authority to explain to Israelis that being a permanently mobilised spartan island in the Middle East has huge drawbacks. After the October 7th debacle no one could have imagined how Israel’s strategic position would be transformed. Now the question is whether Mr Netanyahu can shake up Israel’s destiny again, allowing his country to shift from defiant maximalism to pragmatically maximising its gains. ■
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