There are growing signs that Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately seeking an escalation between Israel and Iran and preparing for another round of war. Iran’s precision-missile testing and missile production are the pretext, and widespread protests taking place in Iranian cities have rekindled Netanyahu’s grand delusions of precipitating regime change in Iran.
More importantly, there are increasing indications that he is trying to manipulate President Trump into joining such an adventure. Trump, infatuated with his abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and believing that he has already effected a regime change in Caracas (even though the Maduro regime is technically still in power, but never mind that), sounds amenable to Netanyahu’s antics, and not for the first time. Netanyahu was critical in persuading Trump to unilaterally withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, (the Iran nuclear deal) in May 2018. It’s Obama’s deal, Netanyahu told Trump. You can do much better, he argued, catering to the ultimate dealmaker’s ego. This was based on the false premise and reckless promise that Iran would collapse economically and beg for a new and improved nuclear deal that would also cover long-range ballistic missiles. French President Emmanuel Macron warned Trump to no avail that this was unlikely. Eight years later, it still hasn’t happened.
Then, in June 2025, Netanyahu persuaded Trump to join a risk-free (for the United States) attack on Iran. In exchange, the prime minister said, Israel would end the war in Gaza. A gullible and ill-informed Trump agreed, the U.S. attacked, but the Gaza war did not end until September, and arguably until ever, so far.
Now Netanyahu is at it again, and Trump is as malleable as ever. In their meeting on December 30, 2025, at Mar-a-Lago, Trump threatened Iran with military action with a grinning Netanyahu next to him. Trump upped the ante, declaring that if Iran continues with its missile development and tests, the U.S. will respond. Two days later, on January 1, he said, “If they [Iran] start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re gonna get hit very hard by the U.S.” He repeated the threat on January 3 after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, speaking to reporters on Air Force One.
But that wasn’t all. He threatened Venezuela, saying, “If they don’t behave, we’ll do a second strike,” after boasting, “We’re in charge … we’re gonna run it,” a statement contradicted the next day by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump concluded his tour d’horizon of the Western hemisphere by noting that Cuba “is ready to fall” and Colombia should be careful. Intoxicated by his own Kool-Aid concoction, Trump rambled on about how “we need Greenland from a national security situation.”
These Ramboesque statements were interpreted by Netanyahu as signs that Trump is willing to entertain another strike at Iran. Nothing for you to lose, Netanyahu likely told Trump; Iran is the worst actor in the world today, and moving against it would bring no adverse consequences for the U.S. Furthermore, he was probably planting in Trump’s head the idea that a regime change in Iran would be his lasting legacy and contribution to world peace. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee is a bunch of European wusses who would never appreciate what you’ve done for the world. But there’s always the FIFA Peace Prize.
In April and again in October 2024, in the midst of the war in Gaza, Israel and Iran exchanged a kinetic ping-pong of missiles, drones, and interceptions. It was more a display of capabilities than a full-scale war, but that didn’t prevent Netanyahu from spuriously explaining the exchanges in terms of “an existential war fought on seven fronts for the survival of Israel.” Netanyahu, for whom confronting and eventually defeating Iran and “Islamo-fascism” was always the defining principle and raison d’etre of his political career, was intent on escalating and expanding the war in Gaza. He did it in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and then directly with Iran.
The rationale underlining a direct clash with Iran had and still has two overarching reasons: political and geopolitical. Politically, for the man responsible for the October 7, 2023, debacle and solely accountable for the unfathomable and tragically cynical policy of paying off Hamas to avoid having to deal with the Palestinian Authority—the worst catastrophe in Israel’s history—prolonging the war in order to distance himself from the calamity made sense. Turning the disaster with Hamas into a strategic triumph over Iran would, in his mind, erase the disgrace of being the prime minister on October 7, who (to this day) refuses to be held accountable.
Geopolitically, particularly after the successful military degrading of Hezbollah and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, Netanyahu began entertaining delusions of remaking the Middle East and transforming Israel’s strategic landscape. Once the war in Gaza failed to reach a decisive end, Netanyahu resolved to attack Iran. But for that, he needed U.S support. By June 2025, he had successfully convinced Trump that using American GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, a.k.a. “bunker busters,” which Israel does not have, and Tomahawk cruise missiles would decapitate Iran for good. Both Trump and Netanyahu exaltedly proclaimed that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “obliterated.” That wasn’t factually true, and Netanyahu knew it, but he concluded that there would be another round.
Then came Venezuela; and now, the opportunity has presented itself again.
Threats and saber-rattling have a built-in, self-fulfilling, escalatory dynamic. Netanyahu knows and embraces that. The hypothetical sequence is clear: First, you get a public commitment from Trump to not rule out a military strike. Then you present “new and alarming intelligence” that Iran is testing precise ballistic missiles and is planning to deflect internal strife onto a war with Israel. Next, you claim that we have actionable intelligence data on the whereabouts of over 400 kg of enriched uranium (60 percent) that went missing after the U.S.-Israeli strikes in June 2025.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Iran is rearming Hezbollah, and in fact, it has done so—with the help of Venezuela. Israel then target-assassinates an Iranian nuclear or rocket scientist, or an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps senior officer in Beirut or Damascus. Iran retaliates, which provokes an Israeli self-defense reprisal on Iranian missile production sites, taking advantage of Israel’s air-space superiority. An Iranian missile response is then met with a U.S. response.
Is this a feasible scenario? In Netanyahu’s mind, yes. But it remains very unclear if Trump will actually join such an escapade. He has opposition in his own administration to such a policy, with Iran sitting well beyond the Western hemisphere and posing no tangible threat to the U.S.
Both Trump and Netanyahu have been heralded in the past, even by critics, as being war-averse, cautious, and circumspect when it comes to military action. On major issues, Netanyahu was fundamentally an indecision-maker, always hesitant to employ military means and preferring to kick cans down the road. Trump ceremoniously declared that he was elected to avoid “forever wars” and entanglements.
Now look at the both of them. Intoxicated by the immediate gratifications of ostensibly risk-free military adventures, neither even makes a pro-forma effort to align military means with political objectives, and neither is concerned in the slightest with the consequences. Soon, both may find out that chaos and machtpolitik, like karma, is a bitch.
