TEL AVIV — Israeli defense officials are warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against campaigning for a US strike on Iran, perhaps with Israeli participation, arguing that such a position not only risks attacks on Israel but also casts it as dragging the United States into a senseless war.

To many observers, Netanyahu’s clear advocacy for a US attack is reminiscent of events leading to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Having lost in the 2000 elections, Netanyahu — then out of office but still a prominent security voice in Israel — traveled to Washington in September 2002 in his capacity as a "concerned citizen" to convince US lawmakers that an invasion of Iraq was necessary to bring down President Saddam Hussein. Addressing Congress in expert testimony, he argued that the overthrow of Hussein’s repressive government would also serve as a signal to leaders in Tehran, thereby bringing an era of stability and peace to the region. The pitch worked. 

Congress authorized the invasion launched in March 2003 that quickly toppled Hussein, but in the long term, it entangled American troops in a bloody war and unleashed a period of prolonged instability in Iraq. Not only did the Iraq war fail to restrain Iran, it in fact did the opposite — upsetting longstanding mutual deterrence between Iran and Iraq and expanding Tehran’s influence throughout the region and beyond through the consolidation of a pro-Iran axis of rulers and militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

The Israeli quest for US leadership in the campaign against Hussein in Iraq reflects a fundamental tenet that has also underpinned Israel’s 30-year struggle against Iran's mullahs and their nuclear ambitions: any major move to rein in hostile regional forces must be led by the United States and its Western allies rather than by Israel itself.