And the winner is…Benjamin Netanyahu

The biggest winner of the Iran war to date is Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity is rising after the US-Israeli attacks crippling Tehran’s military capabilities and decapitating its leadership.

In Israel there is a widespread public perception that a longstanding existential threat is being removed thanks largely to Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and his Likud party hope the public backing for the war, put at 94 percent of the Jewish public in an Israel Democracy Institute poll released Wednesday will be sustained and translate into victory in upcoming elections. The coalition went into the war trailing markedly in polls. Now, riding the war’s popularity, Likud Science Minister Gila Gamliel says the party intends to move elections up from October to June, the earliest time possible.

For Netanyahu, continued US and Israeli success in the war and the achievement of the regime change it is supposed to ignite would, he hopes, bring redemption from his failures to prevent the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. It would likely also garner more support for President Isaac Herzog to pardon him and cancel his corruption trials.

Netanyahu’s gains since the war began with the stunning airstrikes that killed about forty senior Iranian leaders including Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been dramatic. Even his most virulent critics have applauded. Alon-Lee Green, codirector of the left wing Arab-Jewish Standing Together organization posted on Facebook, “Khameinai was a murderous dictator who cruelly oppressed his people. His disappearance from the world won’t make anyone shed a tear.”