The political debate around the Iranian threat in Israel reached a new level after Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview on June 30, 2026, on Channel 14.
The Prime Minister stated that he had twice confronted Iran to save Israel from destruction by atomic bombs, which he claimed Tehran ‘already had.’ He added that if necessary, there would be a third time, and as long as he holds the position of head of government, Iran will not have nuclear weapons.
The next day, on July 1, 2026, at the Herzliya Conference of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Reichman University, these words were sharply criticized by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the leader of the ‘Yashar!’ party, Gadi Eisenkot. Both stated that Netanyahu not only exaggerates the threat but also retroactively changes political history.
Eisenkot: Netanyahu invents a threat to scare the public
Gadi Eisenkot, former Chief of Staff of the IDF and now one of the prominent opposition politicians, spoke at the conference in an interview with journalist Dana Weiss.
His reaction was direct and harsh. Eisenkot stated that Iran had no nuclear bombs, and called Netanyahu’s words an attempt to ‘invent reality’ and ‘invent a threat’ to scare the Israeli public. According to Ynet and N12, he emphasized that the Prime Minister spoke with alarming self-confidence and presented the situation as if Israel was already facing a ready Iranian nuclear strike.
For the Israeli audience, this is an important moment not only in a political sense but also in a social sense. The Iranian nuclear program has been perceived in Israel for many years as one of the main strategic threats, but there is a fundamental difference between the threat of weapon creation and the claim of ready atomic bombs.
Eisenkot effectively accused Netanyahu of erasing this boundary for political effect.
Why the dispute arose now
The statement was made against the backdrop of ongoing debates about the results of Israeli actions against Iran and the role of the US in the new regional reality.
As early as June 15, 2026, Netanyahu stated at a press conference that Israel, together with the US, had eliminated the ‘immediate danger’ from the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic missiles. At the same time, he distanced himself from US-Iran agreements and acknowledged that Israel is not a party to the US agreement with Iran.
Against this background, the formula ‘they already had atomic bombs’ became not just another harsh phrase. It turned into a political test: whether the Prime Minister is speaking about a real intelligence picture or using fear as a tool for internal mobilization.
Bennett: it’s a lie and an attempt to construct history retroactively
Naftali Bennett, who served as Prime Minister of Israel from June 2021 to June 2022, also spoke at the Herzliya Conference and directly refuted Netanyahu’s words.
According to Bennett, the claim that Iran already held nuclear bombs is a lie. He called it an attempt to ‘engineer’ history retroactively, that is, to fit past events into the current political narrative.
Bennett reminded that when he replaced Netanyahu as head of government, he found, in his words, an extremely alarming situation on the Iranian front. He claims that Israel did not have a full-fledged action plan for the Iranian threat, and the transfer of affairs on one of the most complex topics took just over twenty minutes.
The former Prime Minister also stated that after the US withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, Netanyahu’s government did not restore Israel’s necessary strike capabilities and did not allocate a budget for the production of critically important means that might be needed in case Tehran attempts to break through to military nuclear weapons.
In Israeli politics, such accusations sound particularly sharp because it is not about election campaign rhetoric, but about a matter of national security.
NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency follows this topic specifically in the Israeli context: it is important for society to understand where the boundary lies between a real threat, military secrecy, political PR, and an attempt to use fear of Iran as an argument in the struggle for power.
Bennett’s document from January 2022
Bennett also showed conference participants part of a defense document, which he claims he wrote in January 2022 during discussions on the Iranian front.
The document concerned not only a possible military strike but also the systemic weakening of the ayatollah regime. Bennett claims that together with Mossad and the National Security Council, dozens of open and secret areas of work against Iran were prepared.
One example is a technological project that was supposed to help keep the internet in Iran connected even if the regime tries to disconnect the country from the outside world during mass protests. According to Bennett’s logic, such tools could have increased pressure on the government in Tehran from within.
He stated that if this strategy had been consistently implemented from January 2022 until the wave of protests in January 2026, the chances of the Iranian regime falling would have been higher. Bennett called the abandonment of this direction a ‘historical missed opportunity.’
What this dispute changes for Israel
The polemic between Bennett, Eisenkot, and Netanyahu shows that the topic of Iran is once again becoming a central line in Israeli politics.
For Netanyahu, this is proof of his indispensability: he presents himself as a leader who single-handedly keeps Iran from nuclear weapons and is ready to act again. For his opponents, this is no longer a strategy but a political construct in which the past is rewritten to justify the present.
It is especially important that the criticism came not from random commentators but from people who had access to military and political information at the highest level. Eisenkot was the Chief of Staff of the IDF. Bennett was the Prime Minister. Their statements automatically become part of a large Israeli debate about trust in the government after October 7, about the state’s readiness for strategic threats, and about who has the right to speak to society in the language of fear.
The question is not whether Iran is dangerous. For Israel, this is an obvious and long-term threat.
The question is different: did Iran have ready atomic bombs, as Netanyahu said, or did the Prime Minister use an exaggerated formula to strengthen his own political image. It is around this that a new conflict between the government and the opposition is now unfolding.
Main conclusion
Netanyahu’s words about ‘ready atomic bombs’ became not just another loud statement about security.
They opened a debate about how Israel tells society about war, threats, and victories. If the Prime Minister’s statement is not confirmed by the real picture, then it is not just about political polemics, but about citizens’ trust in the country’s leadership on issues of life, war, and national security.
For Israel, which lives under constant pressure from the Iranian threat, this is not an abstract discussion. It is a question of who tells the truth, who manages fear, and who is truly preparing the country for the next crisis.