By: Fern Sidman

As the specter of confrontation with Iran once again looms over the Middle East, Israeli public opinion appears to be hardening around the prospect of military action, even as the country’s domestic political system remains trapped in a familiar paralysis. According to a report on Friday in The Times of Israel, a clear majority of Israelis now support joining a potential United States–led strike against the Islamic Republic should diplomatic efforts fail to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The findings illuminate a society bracing itself for the possibility of regional war at the very moment its political institutions struggle to produce stable governance.

The Channel 12 survey, published Thursday and cited in The Times of Israel report, found that 59 percent of Israeli respondents would favor Israel’s participation in a U.S. military operation against Iran if President Donald Trump were to order such an attack. Only 29 percent voiced opposition, while a remaining 12 percent expressed uncertainty. The figures suggest not merely passive acquiescence to American leadership, but a readiness among Israelis to endorse a joint military campaign that could escalate into one of the most consequential conflicts in the region since the Iraq War.

The poll’s internal breakdown underscores the depth of support across ideological lines, though it is particularly pronounced among Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political base. Some 74 percent of those who voted for parties in Netanyahu’s governing coalition endorsed joining a U.S. strike, reflecting a worldview long shaped by the prime minister’s warnings about the existential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Yet even among voters aligned with opposition parties, 58 percent supported military participation, an indication that the Iranian question continues to transcend Israel’s fractious domestic politics. Iran remains one of the rare issues capable of producing a degree of consensus in a deeply polarized society.

These public attitudes are forming against a backdrop of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from Washington. President Trump, who has revived a maximalist posture toward Tehran since returning to office, warned on Thursday that Iran must reach a nuclear agreement or face “bad things,” language that Israeli commentators quoted in The Times of Israel interpreted as a thinly veiled threat of imminent force. Trump appeared to suggest that a window of 10 to 15 days remained for diplomacy, a compressed timetable that has heightened anxiety across the region and spurred speculation that the administration may already be preparing the military groundwork for action.

Those suspicions were reinforced by reporting from Axios, cited by The Times of Israel, indicating that any American strike on Iran would likely be conducted as a joint U.S.-Israeli operation, surpassing in scale the 12-day Israeli-led campaign against Iranian nuclear and military targets carried out the previous June. Two Israeli officials told the outlet that Jerusalem is actively pressing for an operation aimed not merely at degrading Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but at destabilizing—or even toppling—the regime itself. Such ambitions, if realized, would mark a dramatic escalation in Israel’s long-running shadow war with Tehran, moving it from the realm of covert action and limited strikes into overt regime-challenging warfare.

Within Israel, these strategic debates unfold alongside a stubbornly unresolved political crisis. The same Channel 12 poll that measured public sentiment on Iran also painted a bleak picture of the country’s electoral arithmetic, confirming that neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition bloc is poised to secure a governing majority in the Knesset should elections be held in the near future without the backing of Arab parties. A parallel survey conducted by Zman Yisrael, the Hebrew-language sister site of The Times of Israel, arrived at a similar conclusion, underscoring the persistence of electoral deadlock that has become a defining feature of Israeli politics in recent years.

According to the Zman Yisrael poll, Netanyahu’s Likud remains the single largest party, projected to win 27 of the Knesset’s 120 seats if all parties were to run independently. His broader right-wing and religious coalition would collectively amass 52 seats, supplemented by the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas with 10 seats, the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism with eight, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit with seven. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, however, would fail to cross the electoral threshold, depriving the coalition of a crucial ally and leaving it short of a majority.

On the opposing side of the political spectrum, anti-Netanyahu parties would together capture 53 seats, led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who would emerge as Netanyahu’s principal challenger with an estimated 18 seats. Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu would secure ten, while the centrist Yashar! party led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot and Yair Golan’s left-leaning Democrats would each take nine. Opposition leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid would garner seven seats, with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White trailing with four. As The Times of Israel reported of Israel’s political stalemate, these numbers leave both camps tantalizingly close to power yet incapable of crossing the threshold alone.

The complicating factor remains the Arab parties, whose support could theoretically tip the balance but whose participation in any governing coalition has become politically radioactive since the Hamas-led assault of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza. In the Zman Yisrael scenario where Arab factions ran independently, the Islamist Ra’am party would secure six seats, while Hadash-Ta’al, a coalition of secularist and binational communist factions, would win five. The nationalist Balad party would fall short of the electoral threshold on its own.

While Ra’am played a pivotal role in Bennett’s short-lived government in 2021–2022, leading figures across the Jewish political spectrum have since disavowed reliance on Arab parties, arguing that the post–October 7 climate renders such partnerships untenable. The Times of Israel has documented how this shift has narrowed the already limited pathways to coalition-building, further entrenching the cycle of inconclusive elections.

The juxtaposition of these two realities—a public increasingly prepared for war with Iran and a political system mired in gridlock—highlights a central paradox of contemporary Israeli life. On matters of national security, Israelis appear ready to rally behind decisive action, particularly when the threat is framed in existential terms. On questions of governance, however, the electorate remains fragmented along ideological, religious, and communal lines that make coherent policymaking exceedingly difficult. The Times of Israel has often described this as a condition of “permanent provisionality,” in which governments operate under the shadow of instability even as they confront strategic challenges of historic magnitude.

There is also a deeper tension embedded in the poll numbers themselves. Support for joining a U.S. strike on Iran reflects not only confidence in Israel’s military capabilities but also a degree of faith in the strategic partnership with Washington under Trump’s leadership. Yet that same partnership carries profound risks. A joint campaign aimed at regime change in Tehran would almost certainly provoke retaliation through Iran’s network of proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and militias in Syria and Iraq, exposing Israel’s northern and eastern fronts to renewed violence. Such a scenario could stretch Israel’s already strained military resources and exact a heavy toll on its civilian population.

Moreover, the notion of toppling the Iranian regime raises questions about the endgame of any military intervention. As Middle Eastern history attests, the collapse of entrenched authoritarian systems often yields instability rather than orderly transition. While Israeli officials cited by The Times of Israel express confidence that sustained military pressure could compel Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions or even catalyze internal upheaval, skeptics caution that the Islamic Republic has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of external pressure. The danger, they argue, is that a campaign designed to neutralize Iran’s strategic capabilities could instead entrench hardliners and accelerate the very nuclear pursuits it seeks to prevent.

At home, Netanyahu confronts the challenge of navigating this perilous international landscape while presiding over a fragile political coalition. His government’s inability to secure a stable parliamentary majority without controversial partners constrains its room for maneuver, even as the prime minister projects resolve on the Iranian front. Netanyahu’s political fortunes have risen and fallen with perceptions of his security credentials, and how the Iranian issue has often served as a unifying narrative amid domestic discord. Yet the current moment may test the limits of that strategy, as Israelis weigh the costs of confrontation against the backdrop of economic strain and societal fatigue after years of conflict.

In the coming days, as Trump’s self-imposed deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran approaches, Israelis will continue to look to Washington for cues about whether diplomacy or force will prevail. The polling data captured by Channel 12 and analyzed by The Times of Israel suggests that, should war come, a majority of the Israeli public is psychologically prepared to endorse it. Whether the country’s political leadership can translate that public sentiment into coherent strategy, however, remains an open question—one that will shape not only Israel’s posture toward Iran, but the future stability of the region as a whole.