Addressing the opening of the Knesset winter session Oct. 15, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the “fantastic decade” Israel had experienced under his stewardship. He spoke of a decade of progress and economic growth, of stability and security, of building and prosperity. “Each and every developed state would have been blessed by what we have done,” he told the lawmakers. And then, of course, there was the inevitable mention of Iran — “We will keep pushing it back with all our might.”

It was perhaps no coincidence that the enviable Israeli scientific and educational achievements slipped Netanyahu’s mind on this occasion. Addressing these achievements would have forced him to compare Israel’s standing in these fields with that of its far and close-by Middle East neighbors. A few days ago, Netanyahu accused a social activist of “boring us” with her complaint about the poor quality of health services in outlying areas. Was Netanyahu perhaps concerned now that mentioning the balance of power between Israel and Iran on these critical strategic issues would bore the public?

So what does Israel have to show for this “fantastic decade”? Data from Scopus, the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, indicates that Israel lost its regional dominance to Iran in terms of scientific research output. Israel dropped from first to fourth place, below Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Iran overtook Israel to rank first in the number of biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology studies. In chemical engineering, Israel dropped from first to fifth place and in chemistry and computer science to fourth place, below Qatar and Iran. It also lost its dominance in economics and business administration. Between 1996 and 2016, Israel dropped from 18th place in the global ranking of scientific productivity to 33rd, far below Iran (16th) and Turkey (17th, up from 27th). Even Saudi Arabia moved up from 42nd to 32nd place.

Responding to the data, economics professor Manuel Trachtenberg, who chaired the planning committee of the Israel Council for Higher Education, said the quality of Israeli research is still significantly higher than that of other states in the region. However, he said that Iran, with its population of 80 million, had the potential to close the gap with Israel in research quality and not just in the number of studies. Trachtenberg, who served as a Knesset member for the opposition Zionist Camp faction, warned that Iran’s heavy investment in research, especially in physics, engineering, chemistry and aeronautics, is expected to pose a significant threat.