Israel’s relentless quest for a next enemy

For most of the past year, Israeli officials have described the aftermath of the war with Iran in confident, almost triumphant terms: a weakened adversary, its nuclear program set back, its regional proxies dismantled one by one.

But even before that campaign had fully wound down, a new threat was already being sketched out in Jerusalem, in terms once reserved almost exclusively for Tehran.

This one is harder to define, has no single capital, and, unlike Iran, comprises states that field some of the world’s most capable conventional militaries.

The shift in language was deliberate, and it came from the top.

On 17 February, Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who is widely expected to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s […]