
For six years, I sat on the political-security cabinet, hearing that Hamas is deterred, that it weakens with every operation, and that we are working against Hezbollah’s buildup. Countless times, I heard about our success in the campaign between wars (the campaign - our strikes in Syria over the last decade) aimed, among other things, at preventing Hezbollah's arming, and that our operations against Hamas in Gaza prevent its buildup. Somehow, all these efforts, some of which were indeed successful to a large extent, were not enough.
On the morning of October 7, it became clear that terror organizations had strengthened despite the IDF's attempts to cut the grass. It became evident that Hamas had built up its strength and dug a tunnel system that Israel failed to thwart, and that Hezbollah had turned southern Lebanon into one large fortified target. In the south and north, terror monsters arose under a strategy coined by Netanyahu, “quiet will be met with quiet,” a strategy whose negative peak occurred, as Deri said last week, when the Israeli government allowed Hezbollah to set up a tent on its territory and was afraid to remove it. Hezbollah accumulated about 150,000 missiles, and all the villages in southern Lebanon were one large weapons depot. This is also true regarding Gaza. Only in Judea and Samaria, where we maintain security control regularly and are in security coordination with the Palestinian Authority, is there no massive arming.
There is no more despicable phrase than “quiet will be met with quiet,” which we were informed again this week as a strategy against Iran. But let’s start from the beginning: the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities is correct and necessary. Since October 7, and even more so after the collapse of Hezbollah and Syria, it has been clear that there is no more opportune time than this and that the State of Israel cannot exist while Iran possesses a nuclear bomb.
At a time when the skies over Syria are clear of surface-to-air missiles, Hezbollah is crushed, Iran's air defense system has been damaged, and President Trump is backing Israel, the State of Israel must exploit this enormous advantage to strike at the nuclear facilities and ballistic missiles. There is no doubt that the decision made by Netanyahu is correct, and that the execution by the Air Force, the Intelligence, and the Mossad is perfect.
However, bitter experience teaches that airstrikes alone do not prevent arming over time. Promises that we can strike every launcher and every missile production facility, or any uranium enrichment facility, are misleading. This did not stand the test of reality against Hamas and Hezbollah, and there is no reason to assume that this conception will hold against Iran.
A few months before October 7, Netanyahu said: "In Operation Guardian of the Walls, we set Hamas back a decade." This is the root of the blindness. In reality, it became clear that only minor damage was done to Hamas in that operation.
The head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, was interviewed on the first day of the war on behalf of Netanyahu and his government and said what is known to all: "We will not eliminate the nuclear project through military actions alone." Therefore, the way to ensure that Iran does not have a bomb both now and in the future is by overthrowing the regime or through a tightly enforced agreement with a constant threat from the U.S. of attack if it is violated.
Overthrowing the regime is the best solution, but it is not in our hands. The U.S. and Israel need to invest effort into this, both in terms of consciousness within Iran and in empowering and arming opposition forces. However, currently, there is no armed opposition in Iran, and on the other hand, there is a very cruel and rigid regime, so it is hard to know if and when this will happen. In any case, reliance on overthrowing the regime cannot be a work plan.
Therefore, a good political agreement that will prevent Iran from progressing in its nuclear program, after it has indeed been significantly harmed, is the solution. A good political agreement means an agreement led by the U.S. that includes a constant military threat of attack in the event of a violation and one that also includes the transfer of enriched uranium, whose fate is currently unknown apart from estimates. Without such an agreement, we will find ourselves in the same situation in a few years, but after the Iranians have improved, researched, and learned from their mistakes.
It is important to remember, besides enriched uranium, that the Iranians have the knowledge and motivation. They are a smart and scientifically advanced nation. If they decide to break through to a bomb, we will need to strike again.
We must not convince ourselves of the constant lie that through regular airstrikes we will prevent arming. It is simply not enough. It did not work against Hamas, it did not work against Hezbollah, and it will not work against Iran. In the end, despite the ongoing strikes, a ring of fire was created around Israel that only a bloody war removed. Without an agreement or the overthrow of the regime, this war is merely the first Israel-Iran war.
Ayelet Shaked is an Israeli former politician, activist, and software engineer who served as Minister of Interior from 2021 to 2022 and as Minister of Justice from 2015 to 2019.