Netanyahu's Delusional Iran Campaign Damaged Israel as Deeply as October 7
While reading Michael Hauser Tov's exposé on how Israel conceived of and started Operation Roaring Lion against Iran, the 1959 British satirical film "The Mouse That Roared" comes to mind. In the film, a tiny European duchy declares war on the United States, confident that it will lose and then receive generous amounts of American aid for reconstruction.
(In the film, the duchy accidentally wins. We – in real life – lost big-time, but the absurd logic is the same.) Peter Sellers plays three roles. In a cinematic retelling of our story, Sellers would play the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mossad chief David Barnea and U.S. President Donald Trump. The obvious name for the Israeli remake would be "The Lion That Roared," but "Berel and Shmerel Stage a Revolution" would be more apt.
This is not a story of sloppiness or negligence. It was all planned and executed in a pretty organized fashion (relative to Israelis), for which the entire establishment and those heading it are responsible. The damage to Israel's security and international standing is enormous, no less than that of the October 7 massacre. It was caused by flaws inherent in the culture and mindset.
The first failing was to rely on ignorance. How could anybody even consider that by using a few thousand Kurdish fighters (who understandably refused to be cannon fodder for the undertaking), one person in Tehran and an "influence network" of digital hocus pocus, Israel could engineer regime change in a country whose territory is 74 times that of its own, which has around a million men serving in the army and Revolutionary Guards?
Even in far more promising conditions, who has ever succeeded? Not the United States at the Bay of Pigs, not Israel in Lebanon (there, too, the Mossad devised a delusional plan) and neither the Americans or the Russians in Afghanistan. But in Israel, they would prefer to spend hours hunched over satellite images and Excel files charting air force sorties while dedicating zero minutes to the lessons of history or to simple logic.
The second failing was fear. Anyone who expressed doubts about the plan was silenced. Ministers, officers and confidants faced a determined Benjamin Netanyahu. Some moved into the shadows, and some cooperated. After all, why quarrel with the prime minister and miss the award ceremony if somehow the thing ends up as a success? It is true that the same phenomenon occurs in the U.S. There, everyone thought the whole business was "bullshit," as Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it, but they went along with Trump's delusions. The problem is that we in Israel pay a far higher price.
The third failing was amateurism. When the first plan failed before it started, Barnea ordered another one to be readied "within 48 hours." Even though it was clear from the get-go that Trump might quickly put a stop to it (as he did in June 2025), no one prepared for that eventuality, nor did anyone adapt it to meet more attainable goals or try to lower expectations.
The final failing, and the sorriest of them all, is that no one will pay the price for all of the above. Inundated with rhetoric about existential threats and an impending Holocaust, 68 percent of the Israeli public supports another campaign against Iran (although in a June poll conducted by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, 37 percent of the respondents said Iran had won the last war; only 15 percent thought Israel was the victor). The media sings praises for Israel's "military achievements." The opposition applauded at first, and now claims it could have done it better and acted more forcefully.
Netanyahu was driven by a fantasy where total victory against Iran would erase the stain of October 7 and save him politically and personally. He and Barnea need to go home with their tails between their legs. But anyone who thinks that either that or a commission of inquiry recommending organizational changes, will cure the illnesses that gave rise to the fiasco is cutting slack for himself and for us.
Ofer Shelach is director of the research program Israel's National Security Policy at INSS.