by Rajnish Singh
Benjamin Netanyahu has never been the darling of progressive leaders in the West. Yet over the past decade, he has outlasted Barack Obama, clashed repeatedly with Joe Biden, and brushed off pressure from the European Union. Now, after authorising a dramatic bombing campaign against Iran in June 2025, even as Donald Trump was reportedly in talks with Tehran, Netanyahu may have pulled off the ultimate geopolitical high-stakes play.
This comes despite facing numerous crises: corruption indictments, mass domestic protests, a catastrophic intelligence failure during the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. And yet, following the audacious pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the air offensive against Iran, Netanyahu is riding a political high. The key? A decade-long strategy of defying international pressure, cultivating right-wing US political allies, and biding his time until the moment was right.
His battles with Democratic presidents are well known. His confrontations with Barack Obama over the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, including a controversial address to Congress bypassing the White House, cemented his image as a defiant partner, if not a rogue one.
His strategy, however, was never just resistance; it was substitution. As his relations with Democratic administrations soured, he doubled down on Republicans, forging a powerful alliance with Donald Trump. His bet paid off in 2020, when Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and endorsed key parts of Netanyahu’s agenda.
By 2024, as tensions with Biden deepened, particularly over the Gaza war and Israeli judicial reforms, he was already planning strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. But he didn’t pull the trigger. He waited until Trump’s reelection in 2025, knowing he’d find in the former (and now current) president a far more enthusiastic partner.
The result: a joint US–Israeli operation targeting Iran’s nuclear sites, bypassing the cautious Biden-era approach and directly challenging European calls for restraint.
If Netanyahu played the long game in Washington, he barely bothered with one in Brussels. While EU leaders wrung their hands over the humanitarian cost of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Internal divisions within the EU, between pro-Israel stalwarts like Germany and more critical voices in Ireland or Spain, ensured that no unified sanctions regime ever materialised. European threats rang hollow. Meanwhile, Israel continued to benefit from trade deals and security partnerships that few in Brussels were willing to jeopardise.
In 2024, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, the prime minister simply dismissed it as anti-Semitic bias, knowing full well that the key European powers wouldn’t enforce it anyway.
For Netanyahu, bombing Iran wasn’t just a security imperative; it was a legacy-defining moment. He had warned about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions since the 1990s. Now, with Israel striking Iranian facilities and Hezbollah leadership eliminated in the north, he has finally fulfilled his career-long promise.
The fallout, however, both literal and political, has been intense.. Civil unrest over hostages in Gaza continues, and Iranian missile strikes force citizens to frequently run into underground shelters . But in Israeli politics, strength is still key.
Netanyahu’s brilliance in turning political challenges into opportunities lies not in charm or consensus-building, but in cold strategic timing. He waited out Obama, dodged Biden, and leveraged Trump’s return to the presidency to reassert global relevance.. His Iran strike may not prevent a nuclear weapon, but it has secured him something even more valuable: political dominance, at home and, for now, abroad.
Bibi never plays by the rules — yet somehow, he always ends up on top.
By: N. Peter Kramer
