The smile on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s face was impossible to hide. <\/p>\n
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that the US had bombed three of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, Netanyahu effusively praised the American leader as someone whose decisions could lead the region to a \u201cfuture of prosperity and peace.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since Israel launched its attacks on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities and other targets, Netanyahu and the country\u2019s other political echelon had been careful not to be perceived as dragging Trump into another war in the Middle East. In the end, the US joining the campaign \u2013 and taking credit for the results \u2013 is arguably an even bigger success for Netanyahu, who brought the world\u2019s superpower into what had been Israel\u2019s mission. <\/p>\n
Netanyahu has talked about the threat of Iran for much of his political career, parading out visual aids on occasion \u2013 like a cartoon of a bomb at the UN General Assembly in 2012 \u2013 to help his audience. But the longstanding criticism was that Netanyahu\u2019s rhetoric was all bark, no bite. <\/p>\n
For all the talk of the threat Iran posed to Israel and the wider region, Netanyahu never pulled the trigger on a major military operation. Instead, he authorized sporadic high-risk, high-reward operations from Israel\u2019s Mossad spy agency, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the stealing of the country\u2019s nuclear archive. <\/p>\n
But Iran\u2019s nuclear program survived largely unscathed, and Netanyahu was left for years with no measurable achievement against an issue he came to see as an existential threat to Israel. <\/p>\n
The last 10 days rewrote the script. <\/p>\n
Aviv Bushinsky, who worked with Netanyahu during his first term in the late-90s, called the attacks on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities \u201cno doubt his greatest accomplishment.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s initial waves of attacks and its establishment of air superiority over Iran began a clear string of military successes, which the Trump administration ultimately joined. <\/p>\n
The scale of the success is so great that Bushinsky argued it made Netanyahu\u2019s one of the country\u2019s top two or three leaders since the country\u2019s founding in 1948. The \u201cstain\u201d of failing to stop the Hamas-led attack on October 7 remains with Netanyahu, Bushinsky said, but the attack on Iran has immediately become part of his legacy. <\/p>\n
\u201cNetanyahu has a signature of taking down the nuclear capabilities of the Iranians,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Now Netanyahu immediately faces another challenge: deciding what to do next. At least publicly, the US has made it clear that it sees the Iran strikes as finished as long as Iranian forces don\u2019t attack US troops in the region. <\/p>\n
But after starting the campaign alone, Israel is still pressing its advantage. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Sunday that Israel was preparing for the \u201ccampaign to prolong.\u201d Before the weekend, Israel had conducted the military campaign against Iran on its own, and it has since carried out more strikes after the US bombing of the nuclear facilities. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf the war was designed to obliterate Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure, and the president of the United States says they destroyed the three facilities, then why isn\u2019t Israel announcing mission accomplished?\u201d former Israeli consul general Alon Pinkas asked rhetorically. \u201cThis military solution for everything is fine, as long as you understand that it is aligned with political goals. And I don\u2019t see them.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since the start of the Trump administration, the friction between Trump and Netanyahu has been on full display as the White House pursued a series of steps in the region that left Israel sidelined. Trump\u2019s first trip to the Middle East blew right past Israel without stopping, the American president signed a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen that cut out Israel, and he surprised Netanyahu in April by announcing nuclear negotiations with Iran. <\/p>\n
The US decisions raised questions about whether Netanyahu was able to handle a second Trump administration, especially one with a far more vocal isolationist wing. <\/p>\n
All of those questions disappeared in a puff of bunker buster smoke in the aftermath of the US strikes as the two leaders heaped praise on one another <\/p>\n