Had Prime Minister Naftali Bennett been Israel’s defense minister or just a member of its Security Cabinet, he would have surely banged on the table and demanded direct action against Iran.

Before he became prime minister, Bennett (as mentioned here previously) likened Iran to an octopus deploying its tentacles in the region against Israel. Having branded himself as a high-tech version of then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bennett's use of the octopus example was an enhanced version of Netanyahu’s description of Iran’s use of regional proxies against Israel as “arming the cat’s paws.” As education minister, Bennett demanded that Israel strike the head of the octopus whenever it used one of its tentacles to attack Israel or to spread terrorism in the region. A year later, in 2019, he made the same argument as defense minister, saying in closed-door meetings that there was no point in hacking off the tentacles of the proxies that Iran sends to fight Israel. The Iranians, he said at the time, must understand that Israel will exact a price directly from them. Whenever anything blows up in Israel and Iran is responsible, something must explode within Iran, he reportedly said.

Now, as prime minister, if Bennett bangs his fist, the table will shake. If he issues an order and wins majority approval for it in the Security Cabinet (he will need the votes of Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Gideon Saar), an Israeli attack will surely follow. But similar situations in the past gave rise to the saying by and about Israeli prime ministers that “what you see from here, you do not see from there.” In other words, once you become the top decision-maker, you will not necessarily do everything that you demanded when you served in the opposition or in a lower-ranking government position.

Bennett is now facing a fateful test. According to Israeli, British and American intelligence, Iran used explosives-laden self-destructing drones to attack the merchant vessel Mercer Street in the Gulf of Oman on July 29. The vessel is operated by a company owned by Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer. It is thought that Iran probably did not intend to cause loss of life, but the drone struck the bridge, killing the vessel’s Romanian captain and a British security guard.