Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on March 2 that striking Iran is an urgent imperative and must be done now, arguing that delays will close off military options. He framed the case in operational terms: after past Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile sites, Tehran has accelerated construction of new subterranean facilities that would be much harder to destroy later.
The Israeli prime minister warned that failure to act immediately would make future strikes infeasible. His comments came amid the most dangerous escalation in the Middle East in years: on February 28 the United States and Israel carried out a large-scale attack on Iranian territory in which Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Iran subsequently launched counterstrikes against U.S. bases in the region and Israeli targets, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed a heavy missile strike using a weapon it called “Heybar” against the Israeli prime minister’s office and the air force command.
Netanyahu’s intervention serves several purposes at once. It justifies a potential intensification of military operations on technical grounds—hardening and entrenchment of key Iranian facilities—and signals political resolve to both domestic and international audiences. The argument is familiar: striking a program while it remains exposed is portrayed as less costly and more decisive than trying to defeat deeply buried infrastructure later.
If taken at face value, Israel’s stated timetable raises immediate strategic dilemmas for Washington and other powers. A preemptive or escalatory Israeli campaign against Iran’s nuclear-related and missile infrastructure risks drawing U.S. forces further into direct confrontation, unleashing larger regional retaliation from Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and provoking broader instability in global energy markets. It also complicates legal and diplomatic avenues for de-escalation; the assassination of a sitting supreme leader has already upended norms and removed established channels for restraint.
The near-term picture is one of high volatility. Tactical gains from precision strikes would be offset by long-term consequences: further militarization of the region, acceleration of Iranian dispersal and concealment efforts, and hardening of mutual existential perceptions. For now the public posture from Jerusalem is clear—act before Iran buries its arsenals deeper—but the practical, diplomatic and human costs of following that logic remain large and uncertain.