Do Netanyahu’s Wartime Successes Make Up for October 7?
Netanyahu deserves significant credit for Israel’s wartime successes. But those successes don’t prove that he was uniquely responsible for them and they don’t erase the failures that led to October 7th and complicated the war that followed in its wake.
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In a previous post, I argued that Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to deflect blame for October 7 don’t hold up under scrutiny. That raises a different question: even if he bears responsibility for the failures that led to the massacre, do his wartime successes since then outweigh those failures?
Whenever I discuss this with Likud voters, this is one of the main points I hear. Whatever one thinks about the state of the various fronts today, Israel’s enemies have suffered devastating setbacks. Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely degraded. Bashar al-Assad is living in exile in Moscow. Iran’s nuclear and missile programs have been set back. The Israeli economy has proven far more resilient than many expected.
Netanyahu’s message is simple: You can blame me for October 7, but I kept Israel safe in a way no other prime minister could. Like it or not, I’m still the only person qualified to lead.
It’s a serious argument. But it rests on an equally serious assumption: that Netanyahu alone could have made the decisions that positively influenced the conduct of the war, and that alternative leaders were incapable of similar or better strategic performance. When you look at each front, the claim that Netanyahu is irreplaceable becomes hard to defend.
Iran
Over the past year, Israel fought two major campaigns against Iran alongside the United States, culminating in Operation Roaring Lion. Iran’s nuclear program suffered significant damage. Ballistic missile production was disrupted. Senior IRGC commanders were eliminated, and launch infrastructure was badly degraded.
Netanyahu deserves credit for authorizing those operations and for maintaining a workable relationship with Donald Trump.
But were those successes uniquely his?
The operational work was carried out by the Mossad and the Israeli Air Force. More importantly, there is good reason to believe that another government with a similarly hawkish view of Iran could have pursued much the same strategy.
Netanyahu’s record on Iran is also more complicated than his supporters often acknowledge. He deserves credit for authorizing the campaigns that ultimately damaged Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. But the capabilities that made those operations possible were years in the making, and they were not built by his governments alone.
The strategic approach wasn’t uniquely Netanyahu’s either. Years before becoming prime minister, Naftali Bennett argued that Israel should strike “the head of the Iranian octopus” rather than continue focusing primarily on its proxies. His government also intensified strikes on Iranian assets in Syria. Whether Bennett would ultimately have handled the broader war better is impossible to know. What his record does show is that a more aggressive approach toward Iran did not begin and end with Netanyahu.
The same pattern appears in military preparedness. Bennett has said that when his government entered office in 2021, Israel lacked updated operational plans and sufficient weapons stockpiles for a sustained campaign against Iran. Much of the underlying research and development had already taken place under Netanyahu, but three years of political deadlock meant the budgets needed to turn those plans into operational capability were never passed. The Bennett-Lapid government eventually approved a NIS 58 billion defense budget, including more than NIS 5 billion earmarked for Iran preparedness. Given the years required to procure advanced weapons systems, those investments likely contributed to the stockpiles Israel relied on during the campaigns of 2025 and 2026.
None of this diminishes Netanyahu’s wartime decisions, but It does place them in context. Israel’s successes against Iran rested on years of intelligence work, military planning, procurement, and strategic thinking that spanned multiple governments. Netanyahu deserves credit for the decisions he made once the war began, but those victories do not show that he alone made them possible.
The same point applies to Washington. Maintaining close coordination with President Trump required diplomacy. But persuading a president who has long viewed Iran as a major threat was not a feat that only Netanyahu could have accomplished. There is little reason to think another pragmatic and cogent prime minister could not have made the same strategic case.
Netanyahu’s image as the indispensable “Trump whisperer” looks much thinner today anyway. Washington recently moved forward with a regional memorandum of understanding over Netanyahu’s objections, urged Israel to limit its operations in Lebanon, and signaled a willingness to readmit Turkey into the F-35 program. While Trump and Netanyahu remain on good terms, claims that Netanyahu holds unique sway over Trump are overstated.
Lebanon
Lebanon tells a similar story.
Netanyahu approved major operations against Hezbollah, including the strike that killed Hassan Nasrallah while he was attending the UN General Assembly. But once again, the operational brilliance belonged primarily to Israel’s intelligence services and the Air Force.
The pager operation illustrates the point. Netanyahu authorized it once intelligence indicated Hezbollah was close to discovering the penetration. At that stage, it is difficult to imagine any mainstream Israeli prime minister discarding years of painstaking Mossad work rather than giving the order.
Where prime ministers distinguish themselves is not merely in approving operations once they reach their desk. It is in preparing for the threats that have not yet arrived.
Take the recent waves of lightweight attack drones that killed dozens of Israeli soldiers while air-defense systems struggled to adapt. Netanyahu later said he had warned about the drone threat six years earlier. Perhaps he had. But recognizing a threat is only the beginning. Leadership means ensuring that recognition is translated into capabilities. If the danger was obvious years ago, the fact that Israeli soldiers remained vulnerable is evidence of a failure to follow through, not evidence of foresight.
The civilian picture is no more encouraging. Years after residents were forced from their homes, many northern communities are still contending with delayed compensation, bureaucratic obstacles, and an uncertain future.
Gaza
The campaign in Gaza has produced undeniable military achievements. Hamas lost much of its senior leadership, including Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Large portions of its tunnel network were destroyed. The vast majority of living hostages were returned home.
None of this would have been easy under any Israeli government.
Any prime minister prosecuting a war of this scale in Gaza would have faced intense diplomatic pressure. The density of the battlefield and the inevitable civilian destruction guaranteed that.
Where Netanyahu differs is in how much additional political friction he brought upon himself.
Years of political polarization, an ongoing corruption trial, repeated public confrontations with senior defense officials, and dependence on coalition partners who made inflammatory statements about Gaza all eroded trust—both inside Israel and abroad.
That erosion carried practical costs. Many hostage families questioned whether political considerations were shaping negotiations. American officials increasingly questioned Israel’s political judgment. Calls from coalition ministers to resettle Gaza or encourage mass displacement handed Israel’s critics arguments they were only too eager to use.
A government enjoying greater public confidence and broader international credibility would almost certainly have entered those same diplomatic battles with fewer self-inflicted disadvantages. It would have had more leeway to conduct the war in a more aggressive and efficient fashion.
The Bottom Line
Hamas has been badly weakened, but Netanyahu’s promise of “Total Victory” remains unrealized. Hezbollah remains a long-term threat. Iran is already working to rebuild.
Israel’s military and intelligence services achieved extraordinary operational successes, and Netanyahu deserves credit for authorizing many of the decisions that made them possible.
But that is a different claim from saying those successes depended on him alone.
The evidence points in the opposite direction. Many of Israel’s achievements rested on institutions, planning, and decisions that extended beyond Netanyahu himself. At the same time, his own political leadership contributed to some of the very obstacles Israel had to overcome.
That is why the argument ultimately fails. Wartime successes deserve recognition. They don’t establish that Netanyahu was uniquely capable of delivering them, and they certainly don’t erase responsibility for the failures that made the war necessary in the first place.
