Prime Minister of the new Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced - during his speech on the eve of the swearing-in of members of his government before the Knesset - that confronting Iran's nuclear program and ensuring that it is prevented from developing nuclear weapons will be a top priority for his ruling coalition.

This announcement is not surprising, as the successive governments headed by Netanyahu that ran the helm of affairs in Israel from 2009 to 2021 saw the Iranian nuclear program as an "existential" threat.

Not only because of the fear that Tehran will use nuclear weapons against Tel Aviv, but also because Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons gives its allies in the region a defensive umbrella that reduces Israel's ability to target them.

At the same time, Netanyahu believes that allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons will unleash a regional nuclear race that will give other countries in the region justifications for developing similar atomic capabilities.

As a result, Israel loses one of the most important pillars of its qualitative superiority over the Arab world.

In addition to the strategic factors, Netanyahu attaches great importance to his personal legacy as a leader, as he has often declared that he will work to spare the "Jewish people" the dangers of Iranian nuclear weapons, just as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spared Europe the danger of Nazism.

In addition, Netanyahu is currently interested in imposing a security agenda on the public debate in Israel in order to reduce the level of interest in the corruption cases in which he is currently being tried, which could lead to his imprisonment for a long period.

Despite the foregoing, there have been some "negative" transformations that place many obstacles in front of Israel in its endeavor to thwart the Iranian nuclear program.

As some of these transformations were caused by Netanyahu personally.

And if Netanyahu does not admit this, many political and security leaders in Israel believe that he made a strategic mistake during his tenure as head of the previous government when he persuaded former US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the nuclear agreement signed by Iran and the great powers in 2015, without obligating Tehran to another framework that reduces its ability to further develop its nuclear programme;

The withdrawal of the United States from the agreement and the set of “maximum” sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, encouraged by Netanyahu, gave Iran the justification to liberate itself from the restrictions of the 2015 agreement and start increasing uranium enrichment levels to 60%, and developing the necessary technical capabilities, especially advanced centrifuges.

Although the Mossad carried out hundreds of secret operations against the Iranian nuclear program during the era of the Netanyahu and Bennett-Lapid governments, including assassinations of nuclear scientists, cyber attacks targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, and explosions that hit qualitative military-industrial facilities deep inside Iran;

It did not succeed in forcing Iran to back down from further development of its nuclear program.

At the same time, the composition of the new government, the nature of the balance of power in it, and the divergence of agendas that govern the orientations of its parties do not help Netanyahu meet the requirements of confronting the Iranian nuclear program.

While confronting the Iranian nuclear program is Netanyahu's top priority, his partners in the government who are representatives of the religious right insist that Israel must invest its maximum energy in order to resolve the conflict with the Palestinian people by expanding settlements, rooting Judaization, annexing lands, and harming the Palestinians' ability to continue resistance.

It is true that representatives of the religious right in Netanyahu's government will not oppose his policies aimed at thwarting the Iranian nuclear program.

But at the same time, they will not allow the confrontation with Iran to be at the expense of the plan to resolve the conflict with the Palestinian people.

Representatives of the religious right in the new government are fully aware that Israel cannot exhaust its energy in confronting the Iranian nuclear at a time when it implements the agenda adhered to by the "Jewish Strength" movement led by "National" Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and the "religious Zionist" movement headed by the Minister of Finance and Settlement. Bezalel Smotrich, which is to work to annex large areas in the West Bank.

The official Israeli TV channel "Kan" recently revealed that the administration of US President Joe Biden informed Netanyahu that his new government's taking any step aimed at annexing parts of the West Bank or changing the status quo in Al-Aqsa Mosque would affect Washington's willingness to cooperate with Tel Aviv in a nuclear confrontation. Tehran.

But even if the new government does not intend to annex parts of the West Bank and does not significantly change the status quo in Al-Aqsa, the implementation of the agreements between Netanyahu and his partners in the religious right, on the basis of which the new government was formed, will reduce Israel's ability to confront the Iranian nuclear.

The new Minister of National Security directed to change the shooting orders in a way that would allow the occupation police to expand their targeting of Palestinians and implement his plan aimed at causing a further deterioration in the conditions of detention of prisoners in the occupation prisons.

It will ignite the security situation in the West Bank and Israel in a way that increases the chances of Gaza and the Palestinians inside it joining it.

This will reduce the ability of the Israeli army and security establishment to devote themselves to facing external challenges, especially the Iranian nuclear program.

At the same time, the eruption of a confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians and the resulting manifestations of widespread targeting of Palestinian civilians will affect Israel's international standing.

This will reduce the ability of decision-makers in Tel Aviv to enlist international, particularly Western, support for their policies towards Iran.

In addition, although the decline in the chances of reaching an agreement between Tehran and the West has led to a convergence of the American and Israeli positions on the Iranian nuclear file, especially after Moscow and Tehran intensified their military cooperation, there are still fundamental differences separating the two sides in everything related to the nature of the circumstances in which Military intervention was required to thwart the Iranian atomic project.

Israel declares that the military option must be used against Iran so that it does not turn into a country on the brink of nuclear capabilities.

That is, not enabling it to accumulate technical and scientific capabilities that would enable it to enrich uranium at levels and quantities sufficient to produce a nuclear weapon, even if it did not use this uranium in producing this weapon.

On the other hand, the United States has made it unmistakably clear that it is committed to military action against Iran only to prevent it from producing nuclear weapons.

In other words, the United States does not see Iran's transformation into a country on the brink of nuclear capabilities as a justification for attacking it militarily.

What complicates matters is the fact that without American military and political support, Israel alone will not be able to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program by military means.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo acknowledged that Israel's own capabilities and resources do not allow it to deal a fatal blow to the Iranian nuclear project.

And if the Israeli military leaders acknowledge that Israel alone cannot destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, then Netanyahu will not be able to pass a decision within the government to carry out a military strike on the Iranian nuclear.

As revealed by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Netanyahu tried in 2010 to pass a decision to launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but the opposition of the Army Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and Dagan himself prevented that.

Therefore, it is likely that Israel, under Netanyahu's leadership, will marry between continuing to implement secret operations aimed at disrupting the Iranian nuclear program on the one hand, and on the other hand, intensifying political and diplomatic efforts to persuade the United States and Europe to impose more sanctions, which it believes can reduce the ability of the government in Tehran to continue Devotion to the development of the nuclear program.

However, the success of these efforts depends mainly on Netanyahu's ability to convince his government partners, representatives of the religious right, to avoid escalation in the Palestinian arena.