On Jan. 6, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, presented President Reuven Rivlin with his think tank’s annual strategic assessment for Israel and index of the security threats it faces in 2020. This year’s report by the leading Tel Aviv University institute, rated among the top 50 in the world in the field of security and international relations studies, was presented three days after the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

The document was completed prior to Soleimani’s killing, but the institute updated it, saying the targeted strike against Soleimani bolstered its assessment about the likelihood of an escalation and the need for Israel to decide on a new security strategy. The assassination creates a new context and could potentially generate a strategic change, the extent of which it is too early to predict, the researchers wrote. The implications of the killing for US policy on Iran’s regional activity and possible Iranian retaliation must be examined in-depth, they added.

Although the document does not specifically say so, the cautious phrasing essentially indicates that the report’s authors — former senior defense officials — believe Israel could find itself under Iranian attack. The chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, said much the same thing in a Dec. 25 speech, noting that Iran’s policies had become more aggressive, toward Israel, too. “There is a possibility that we will face a limited confrontation with Iran and we are preparing for it,” Kochavi said.

But despite the growing Iranian threat, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett is mainly busy with rehabilitating his political career, crushed in two successive 2019 elections. As I described at greater length in a previous article, he is dealing mostly with minutia. Bennett’s strange recent appointment as interim defense minister has restored him to the leadership of the New Right party and pushed aside his political partner Ayelet Shaked. He now seems convinced that his office in Tel Aviv’s IDF and Defense Ministry compound is designed more for furthering his political career and less for dealing with the existential threats to the state.