On Monday morning, 59 years after the Six-Day War, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his Levi Eshkol moment.
On June 3, 1967, as tensions in the Middle East reached a fever pitch following Egyptian then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran, the expulsion of UN observers from Sinai, and repeated promises to drive Israel into the sea, then-prime minister Levi Eshkol received a letter from former US president Lyndon Johnson that essentially said: Don’t preempt.
“I must emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities,” Johnson, a pro-Israel president, wrote. “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone. We cannot imagine that it will make this decision.”
In other words, as the letter has been paraphrased over the years, Johnson told Eshkol, “If you go alone, you will stand alone.”
Eshkol read the letter and then, two days later, decided to go alone. Israel preempted.
Why? Because Eshkol believed Israel was facing an existential threat and that securing the country’s interests took precedence over the wishes of even its closest ally.
Netanyahu's version of the Eshkol dilemma
Netanyahu faced a version of that dilemma on Sunday night after Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel and US President Donald Trump, speaking through a couple of Israeli journalists, publicly urged Israel not to respond. He later spoke directly with Netanyahu, though the contents of that conversation were not released.
But what Israelis heard, what the region heard, and what the world heard was the president of the United States telling Netanyahu not to strike back while leaving the consequences of disregarding that message to the imagination.
Netanyahu struck anyway.
In doing so, he followed a long line of Israeli prime ministers who, at pivotal moments, concluded that Israeli interests required defying Washington.
The list is familiar. David Ben-Gurion declared statehood in 1948 despite fierce opposition from the State Department. Eshkol launched the Six Day War despite Johnson’s warning.
Menachem Begin ordered the strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, even though he had to be aware that former US president Ronald Reagan would likely be furious. Reagan was indeed furious and temporarily halted deliveries of four F-16 fighter jets.
The same pattern appeared in 2002 when Ariel Sharon continued Operation Defensive Shield and the offensive in Jenin after the Park Hotel massacre despite pressure from former US president George W. Bush to pull back “without delay.”
It appeared again in 2007 when Ehud Olmert ordered the destruction of Syria’s nuclear reactor after Bush told him he preferred to handle the matter diplomatically.
In each case, the Israeli prime minister concluded that Israel’s interests outweighed Washington’s objections.
The question, however, is why Netanyahu viewed Sunday’s situation in similar terms. Unlike Eshkol in 1967, Israel was not confronting an immediate existential threat.
The answer is that a failure to respond would have allowed Iran to establish a new strategic equation, projected weakness throughout the region, and carried a significant domestic political cost.
What was the new equation Tehran was trying to create? The linking of Lebanon and Iran. Iran was effectively positioning itself as Hezbollah’s protector and signaling that future Israeli action against Hezbollah in Beirut would trigger a direct Iranian response.
Tehran's proxy doctrine inverted
As Iran expert Raz Zimmt noted in a post on X/Twitter, this reflects a complete inversion of Iran’s traditional proxy doctrine. The proxies were supposed to protect Iran.
The theory was that if Israel ever struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, Hezbollah and the other proxies would rain fire on Israel. Instead, the opposite appears to be happening: Iran is now compelled to protect the proxies.
Nor is this the first time one of Iran’s allies has attempted to dictate Israeli policy.
The effort recalls Hamas’s attempts in 2021 to establish red lines around Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mount.
Hamas warned that if Israel evicted residents from Sheikh Jarrah or carried out what it called provocations on the Temple Mount, rockets would follow. On Jerusalem Day in 2021, it even issued an ultimatum regarding the Flag March.
Israel proceeded with the march anyway. Hamas fired rockets. Israel responded by intensifying Operation Guardian of the Walls, which began two days earlier.
The message then was clear: no terror organization will dictate Israeli policy in its capital – don’t link Gaza with Jerusalem.
The message now being sent to Iran is the same: no terror state will dictate Israeli security policy within its borders – don’t link Iran with Lebanon.
Netanyahu felt he had to act to prevent that new equation from taking hold.
He also needed to project strength. Across the region, governments, organizations, and publics were watching Sunday night to see how Israel would respond.
As former strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer has argued for years, one of the reasons the Abraham Accords countries moved closer to Israel in the latter part of the last decade was their belief that Israel would act in its own interests even when doing so meant standing up to Washington.
Dermer, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States at the time, has repeatedly pointed to Netanyahu’s 2015 speech to Congress, delivered against former US president Barack Obama’s wishes, as evidence of that independence.
In his telling, that willingness to act independently convinced many regional actors that Israel was serious, reliable, and prepared to defend its interests even if that meant going against the wishes of the US president.
Had Netanyahu bowed to Trump's request on Sunday and refrained from responding after Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles, the opposite message would have been sent: that Israel is constrained, hesitant, and ultimately unwilling to challenge American dictates.
That is not generally a quality admired in the Middle East.
And then there is the political dimension.
With Netanyahu’s political rivals – Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman, and Gadi Eisenkot – frequently portraying him as Trump’s poodle, failing to respond to the Iranian attack would have carried a high political cost.
Responding will probably not win him many votes. Not responding, however, might have cost him some.
Particularly because his opponents would undoubtedly have resurrected a speech he delivered to the Knesset on June 12, 2021, in his farewell address after losing power.
Criticizing the incoming Bennett-Lapid government, Netanyahu argued that they would be incapable of standing up to American pressure as he had done repeatedly, especially regarding Obama’s Iran policy.
“An Israeli prime minister must be able to say no to the president of the United States on matters that endanger our existence,” he said.
On Sunday, Netanyahu did exactly that.
At least for now.