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. Israel’s Channel 12 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 2025 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.
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 61 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 14, which has acted as his lead cheerleader in the Israeli media, “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.
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