Russian President Vladimir Putin, it turns out, had a better instinctive understanding of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than then-US president Barack Obama’s closest advisers.
In 2012, José Maria Aznar – the staunchly pro-Israel former Spanish prime minister – delivered a lecture in Jerusalem. Aznar, who served from 1996 to 2004, recalled efforts during his tenure to persuade Russia not to sell advanced weapons – particularly the S-300 surface-to-air missile system – to Iran.
He recounted one conversation he had with Putin about this very issue. “Don’t worry – you, me – we can sell them everything, even if we are worried about an Iranian nuclear bomb,” Aznar quoted Putin as saying. Then Putin leaned in and whispered: “Because at the end of the day, Israel will take care of it.”
That was Putin’s view at the turn of the century: Russia could sell state-of-the-art air defense systems to Iran, knowing full well that if Tehran ever got too close to the nuclear threshold, Israel would act with or without those weapons systems in Iranian hands.
In Washington, however, at least during the Obama administration, the prevailing view was quite different.
Obama administration thought Netanyahu was a coward on Iran
In October 2014, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic and known for his close ties to the Obama White House, published a much-discussed piece titled “The Crisis in US-Israel Relations Is Officially Here.”
It was a moment of deep tension between Washington and Jerusalem, driven by the collapse of peace talks with the Palestinians and escalating disagreements over Iran. At the time, the US was racing toward a nuclear deal with Tehran – an agreement Netanyahu adamantly opposed.
Goldberg opened his article by quoting a senior Obama official who said bluntly of Netanyahu: “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit.”
“I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly,” Goldberg wrote. “This official agreed that Netanyahu is a ‘chickenshit’ on matters related to the comatose peace process but added that he’s also a ‘coward’ on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.
“The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. ‘It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.’”
Well, there’s an assessment that didn’t stand the test of time. Putin’s, however, surely did.
Netanyahu's previous attempts to strike Iran postponed
In all fairness, the Obama official wasn’t only trying to belittle Netanyahu. His comments were rooted in real events.
Between 2010 and 2012, Netanyahu repeatedly pushed for military strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, only to be blocked by Israel’s own military and intelligence leadership. In 2010, it was IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi who argued that Israel lacked the operational capability to pull it off successfully.
In 2011, the intelligence community, led by then-Mossad head Meir Dagan, voiced staunch opposition. Two key cabinet ministers at the time, Moshe Ya’alon (then minister for strategic affairs) and Yuval Steinitz (finance minister), also withdrew their support.
By 2012, concerns over US objections sealed the issue. The pattern was unmistakable: military resistance, intelligence pushback, cabinet hesitation, and American pressure combined to stay Netanyahu’s hand. Despite his fiery rhetoric about the existential danger of a nuclear Iran, he didn’t follow through.
Asked about this during a Channel 14 interview on Tuesday, Netanyahu declined to elaborate. He merely confirmed that in 2011-2012, he wanted to strike Iran’s nuclear sites but “could not enlist a majority in the security establishment or among the cabinet” to support the operation.
So it was postponed. Until last Friday.
In the interview, Netanyahu explained how everything lined up in such a manner as to make the attack now both possible and necessary – a classic now-or-never moment.
And, ironically, it all began with Hamas’s attack on October 7.
October 7 ruined the Iranian strategy
YAAKOV AMIDROR, former head of Israel’s National Security Council and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, described during a JISS webinar how that attack became a strategic turning point.
Since 1994, he explained, Iran’s grand strategy has rested on two foundational pillars – both well understood by Israeli defense planners.
The first pillar was the creation of a “ring of fire” around Israel: a regional network of proxy forces capable of threatening the country from multiple directions. Hezbollah in Lebanon was the cornerstone of this strategy. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad reinforced its southern flank in Gaza. Iran also worked to establish footholds in Syria and Iraq via Shi’ite militias and pushed to gain influence in Judea and Samaria.
Israeli actions thwarted Iran’s efforts to use Syria as a launching pad against Israel, but the broader vision remained intact. King Abdullah of Jordan famously dubbed it the “Shia Crescent” – an arc stretching from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, encircling Israel with hostility while shielding Iran itself, which is relatively far away, from direct conflict.
The second pillar, Amidror continued, was Iran’s nuclear program. The strategy was clear: build a nuclear capability slowly and quietly, and once secured, use it as a protective umbrella under which Iran could project power and expand regional influence – a vision of a vast, resurgent Persian empire.
Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, said Amidror, “ruined the plan and started the war without coordinating with Iran or with Hezbollah. He thought that because he was part of the axis, an important part of the axis, the rest of the axis would join in. That was his biggest strategic mistake.”
Israel’s most important strategic decision, Amidror said, came just three days later, on October 10.
“All those who say Israel doesn’t have a strategy don’t understand strategy,” Amidror said. “The key decision was to go piece by piece – to deal with each component of the Iranian axis individually.”
That meant not immediately opening a northern front with Hezbollah, as some, such as former defense minister Yoav Gallant, had recommended. Instead, Israel avoided a two-front war, concentrated its forces on Gaza, and left only enough troops in the North needed to defend the communities there. Special forces worked inside Lebanon, preparing the ground for a wider battle there, while the IDF focused on dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure in the south.
Until the “beeper” operation last September, when thousands of pagers exploded in the hands and pockets of Hezbollah men, and the tide in the north turned.
From that point, Israel shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon. The beeper operation, Amidror stressed, showed how meticulously – and how long – Israel had been planning for a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Then, Amidror continued, something unexpected happened: the fall of Assad in Syria – triggered by the beating Hezbollah took in Lebanon. Wisely, he said, Israel didn’t succumb to temptation and escalate into a direct confrontation with Iran. Instead, it stuck to its strategy of sequential dismantling.
Israel turned its attention to Syria, Amidror said, and destroyed Assad’s army, ensuring the rebels who took over the country would not have a centralized military force.
That campaign created something new: a strategic corridor stretching from Israel through Syria and Iraq – two areas now without functional air defense systems – all the way to western Iran. For the first time, Israel had a clear, unobstructed path into the heart of the Islamic Republic.
At the same time, intelligence suggested that Iran – seeing its proxy strategy go up in smoke – was shifting gears: rushing to finalize its nuclear capabilities and dramatically ramping up its missile production program.
Iran had formed a secret group, Netanyahu said in his interview, tasked with solving the weaponization challenge: how to turn its nukes into a weapon. Once that breakthrough was achieved, Israel’s window for preemption would close. The threat would no longer be theoretical – it would be existential.
That, Netanyahu said, is when he issued the order to act.
Not only was Iran accelerating its nuclear ambitions, it was also vastly expanding its ballistic missile program. According to Netanyahu, Iran aimed to produce 300 1-ton ballistic missiles per month – or over 11,000 within six years – a total that would be the equivalent of two nuclear bombs.
One would be enough to destroy Israel, he said.
Faced with a double threat – nuclear weapons and the production of thousands upon thousands of ballistic missiles that could overwhelm Israel’s air defenses and destroy large swaths of the country – Netanyahu said he had no choice but to strike, and plans worked on for years were made operable.
The prime minister recalled a story he has told before from his days in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit. During one training exercise, he was learning to dive with the navy commandos. The day was stormy – waves crashed, the wind howled, it was chaotic above the surface. But underwater it was calm. The task was simple: dive, set your compass, and swim toward the objective.
Netanyahu’s threats weren’t hollow - they were shelved
The point Netanyahu wanted to illustrate: there was a lot of noise around him now, too. But with a compass and a clear mission, he methodically moved toward it.
In the end, what seemed for years like empty bluster turned out to be something else entirely: a long, calculated wait for the right moment. Netanyahu’s threats weren’t hollow; they were shelved – postponed by internal resistance, international pressure, and unfavorable conditions. But when the strategic stars finally aligned – when Iran’s proxy network began to crumble, when Assad fell, when intelligence revealed Tehran was sprinting for the bomb – Israel acted.
Putin may have said it with a smirk, but he wasn’t wrong: at the end of the day, Israel would “take care of it.” That day, after years of doubt and delay, finally arrived. And the result is not just a stunning military operation – it’s a reshaping of assumptions, a recalibration of deterrence, and a reminder that, for Israel, existential threats can never be left to fester indefinitely. They must be confronted.
That, said Amidror, is the most important lesson of October 7.
“We must not allow threats to continue unfolding without trying to cut them off before they materialize. We did not do that with Hamas, with Hezbollah, or with Iran, and that was a strategic mistake. We need to understand in the future that this is part of our security doctrine: preventing threats from materializing is more important than preserving the quiet and calm of Israel’s citizens.”