Israel's security cabinet has directed the military to step up its preparations for a possible new attack on Iran, the country's public broadcaster KAN revealed on Wednesday night — instructions the broadcaster said could lead the military into activities that might provoke a war. The order was not announced by the government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has not publicly confirmed the report. It surfaced in the middle of Israel's government transition, on the same day the man tasked with forming the next government wrote to Netanyahu demanding he keep his hands off exactly this kind of move until a government with the Knesset's confidence is sworn in.
The cabinet issuing the directive has not actually sat for more than a month. According to KAN, its last meeting was on Oct. 5, before Israel's Oct. 27 elections; at that session, ministers decided to increase military preparedness for several scenarios involving Iran, including a potential Israeli strike and a surprise Iranian attack. The cabinet is scheduled to meet again on Sunday, its first session since. Under Section 40 of Israel's Basic Law: The Government, a decision to go to war — or to launch a significant operation likely to lead to war — must be approved by the government or its security cabinet. The law makes no exception for a caretaker administration, so Netanyahu's cabinet holds that power in full until the moment a new government wins a confidence vote.
The disclosure came hours after Gadi Eisenkot — the former IDF chief of staff who leads the Yashar party and was handed the mandate to form a government by President Isaac Herzog on Sunday, after factions representing 67 lawmakers recommended him against 46 for Netanyahu — sent Netanyahu a formal letter demanding restraint. "Only 46 Knesset members still support your continued tenure as prime minister," Eisenkot wrote, reminding Netanyahu that he remains in charge of the IDF and the security forces as an interim prime minister who no longer holds the Knesset's confidence. Deploying those forces without a direct and immediate threat, he warned, "could have devastating consequences for Israeli democracy and for citizens' trust in the institutions of government." His demand: "Exercise restraint and caution regarding dangerous moves that can wait until a new government enjoying the confidence of the Knesset is sworn in." Eisenkot also asked to receive regular classified security briefings during the transition and appealed to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to intervene after his team's attempts to arrange a briefing through Netanyahu's office failed.
Netanyahu's office hit back the same day. "All decisions made by the government under Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership were based solely on security considerations and made in full coordination with the security establishment," it said. "They have delivered unprecedented achievements for the State of Israel, and that will continue to be the case." The office called Eisenkot's letter "an irresponsible move that publicly discusses sensitive security matters" and "a transparent attempt to politicize Israel's national security issues," and renewed Netanyahu's call for Eisenkot to join a government that fights terrorism rather than form one, as the statement put it, "with supporters of terrorism." Eisenkot answered with questions of his own: "If that is the case, why did you refuse my request for an operational briefing through the customary official channels? Why are you trying to delay the convening of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee until next week?"
Behind the letters sits a running argument inside Israel's security establishment. Channel 12 has reported renewed disagreement between Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir over possible military action against Iran, with Zamir opposing an unspecified operation the prime minister sought — the second such clash reported since before the elections. Senior figures in Eisenkot's bloc go further, accusing Netanyahu of pressing for a unilateral operation without American backing; that is their claim, and Netanyahu's office rejects any suggestion that politics enters his security decisions. Netanyahu's own public case is that the threat allows no waiting: at the inauguration of the new Knesset on Tuesday he pointed to what he called the existential threat of Iran reconstituting its nuclear program, and after a weekend phone call with President Donald Trump he told lawmakers that "Iran is working to renew the nuclear threat" and that "the only way to permanently eliminate this existential threat is to overthrow the mullah regime."
That weekend call is where America enters the story directly. A source familiar with the conversation described it as exceptionally confrontational — "a shouting match from hell," in the source's words — over resuming military operations against Iran; Netanyahu's office strongly disputed that account, insisting the conversation went well. Washington's public line, delivered a day before the KAN disclosure, points the other way: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that "we don't need to conduct military strikes if we're achieving the same objective through economic means," describing an economic pressure campaign against Tehran that is set to get worse. And on Wednesday, Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei aimed a warning at the United States itself: if American aircraft take off from a U.S. military base — "even one located in a European country" — to bomb Iran, Iran will strike those bases as well.
For ordinary people, the stakes of a preparations order are not abstract. A second Israel–Iran war would put American troops at bases across the Middle East and Europe in the line of fire, threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and with it the price of oil and everything carried on it, and test whether Washington gets pulled into a fight its own secretary of state says it does not need. Inside Israel, the question Eisenkot's letter puts on the record is narrower and sharper: whether decisions that could start that war should be taken by a caretaker cabinet that has not met in over a month — or wait the few weeks until a government the Knesset actually chose is in place.
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