Iran Looms Large On Election Day In Israel

As Israelis cast their ballots in today’s general election, some voters may wonder whether Israel may soon be at war with Iran, its greatest enemy, yet again.

Since 2025, Israel and Iran have fought two wars. In both instances, the United States joined Israel in attacking Iran.

In bold air campaigns, Israel and its American ally killed top-level Iranian leaders and inflicted immense damage to Iran’s military infrastructure, defence industries and nuclear facilities. But the wars ended on inconclusive notes. The Iranian regime was not defeated, leaving a panoply of loose ends when the bulk of the fighting stopped.

Since then, Iran has regrouped and taken steps to rearm. Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist leadership remains defiant and reportedly ready to go to war for a third time. Periodic clashes have broken out with the United States in the last few months, and the US Navy maintains a blockade on Iranian ports. Furthermore, Iran appears to be in at least partial control of the Strait of Hormuz, the international waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes.

Several days ago, the director of US National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, warned that Iran has reached the “advanced stages” of planning attacks against US targets in the region. Clayton, in a memo addressed to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said that Iran has “substantially increased” its efforts to target American personnel.

Clayton’s warning should be seen against the backdrop of Iran’s threats to expand its bank of targets should the United States or Israel resume strikes. Iranian officials have warned that Iran would “more aggressively” hit US forces in case of renewed conflict.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said on social media recently that Iran views the war with the United States and Israel as existential. “We will not fight a classic war,” he said. “It will be an asymmetrical, fierce and conclusive war that will target the enemy’s strong points and weak spots.”

Iranian spokesmen have threatened to take aim at regional civilian infrastructure, energy sites and underwater fiber optic cables, which transmit internet traffic. In the meantime, Iran has reportedly conducted tests of medium-range Emad and Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles, some or all of which could target Arab Gulf states.

The Institute for the Study of War says that US intelligence agencies believe that the Iranian threat to Americans in the Middle East is at its highest level since last winter’s US-Israel-Iran war, which erupted on February 28 with an Israeli air strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The New York Times has reported that the United States has sent more aircraft carriers to the area and started to reduce its diplomatic personnel in the Middle East due to the threat posed by Iran. The newspaper surmises that Iran appears convinced that the United States and Israel are preparing to launch their third major attack in 16 months.

Certainly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is primed for a new round. According to a CNN report on October 26, Netanyahu was pushing for a joint US-Israel strike on Iran prior to the Israeli election to enhance his prospects.

Netanyahu has denied such intentions, but he has been talking tough on Iran for months now.

This past April, he said that the campaign against Iran has yet to be completed. “We hit them, but we still have more to do.” Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel “broke the barrier of fear” when it launched air strikes in Iran last year.

Israel is particularly concerned about the fate of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is supposedly buried beneath a nuclear plant that was bombed during the 12-day war in June 2025.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has echoed Netanyahu’s sentiments. As he put it, “Assuming there is no regime change in Iran in the foreseeable future, we have to assume that Iran will try to rebuild its capabilities, meaning that we will have to go back to war there in a few years’ time”

Another war may be even closer.

A few days ago, an Israeli television station, Channel 13, reported that the chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, General Eyal Zamir, rejected Netanyahu’s plan to strike Iran prior to the election.

On October 25, Netanyahu posted an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv in flames after being struck by an atomic blast. The post he shared was written by Yuval Bloomberg, an avid supporter and a right-wing activist who denounced the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Bloomberg’s scaremongering post included an eerie image of a mushroom cloud rising above the city and a warning that Israel could be exposed to a “second Holocaust” if Netanyahu is not reelected. In addition, Bloomberg claimed that Israel should confront Iran while US President Donald Trump is still in office. Future generations “will not forgive us if we miss this historic window of opportunity,” he noted.

Trump, having repeatedly insisted that Iran cannot have a nuclear program, has said he is open to attacking Iran after the November 3 midterm elections should diplomacy fail. “Unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job,” Trump said recently.  “We have to finish the job that we started!”

But it is questionable whether Trump has the desire or the gumption to embroil the US in a protracted “forever” war.

US-Iran negotiations have so far yielded very little, despite efforts by Pakistan, Qatar and Russia to bridge the gap. Iranian officials have said they will not surrender to US demands regarding the Iranian nuclear program.