Like a lot of people of center-right/center-left political leanings, I’ve spent the past few decades detesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, especially as he has grown increasingly authoritarian, bellicose and inhumane.

And yet those of us in the Bibi critics’ club do have to confront an uncomfortable fact: Especially over the past 10 months, Netanyahu has impressively followed through on his aim to remake the face of the Middle East.

He’s degraded Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the vilest terror regimes on the planet. He has made the Iranian theocracy look pathetic and decrepit. Israel has demonstrated its vast military and intelligence supremacy over its enemies, establishing total freedom of the skies over much of Iran. It has shown that its agents can penetrate enemy organizations and find and kill their militant leaders. Netanyahu’s actions have contributed to the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria and have helped the legitimate Lebanese government regain control of its own territory. The Axis of Terror is in shambles.

This includes the Israeli-U.S. assault on Iran’s nuclear program. We don’t yet know how much damage that assault has done. An early Pentagon report found that the attacks set the Iranian project back only a few months, which was picked up big-time on one side of the internet. But several other reports, including one from the Institute for Science and International Security, found that the attack “effectively destroyed” Iran’s enrichment program.

We may know in time what the bombings accomplished. In the meantime, we do know that Israel and the United States have the will and capacity to attack Iran anytime and anyplace. We do know that if Iran reconstitutes its nuclear program, Israel and the United States have the capacity to deliver a much more devastating and regime-threatening blow. We also know that Iran and its proxies have made some insanely self-destructive miscalculations since Oct. 7, 2023, and they must know that, too. These are ominous omens for the theocrats in Tehran.

Barbaric, Yes, but a Force for Good on Dealing With Iran

No, I am not saying I support all the ways Netanyahu has responded to the Oct. 7 attack. I supported the aim of the war in the Gaza Strip — to degrade Hamas — but the way Israel has done this has often been uncivilized and barbaric, exercising a callous disregard for human life. And I’m not saying Netanyahu and his settler allies have any sensible vision for how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the years ahead, beyond bullying, bigotry and cruelty.

But I am saying that people like Netanyahu and Donald Trump, who I generally regard as forces for ill in the world, turn out to be, at least on the broader issue of the Iranian threat, forces for good. I am saying that those of us who detest Bibi and Trump should show a little humility and do some rethinking.

What do those guys know that led to their success? What can we learn from what just happened?

I think Netanyahu was right to be obsessed with Iran over the past several decades. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a signature event in world history. Iran has been the central source of instability in the Middle East ever since. Other issues in that region are secondary.

I also think Netanyahu was right to go on offense and take a maximalist response to the events of Oct. 7. Over the past few decades, Iran has methodically built a noose around Israel with terror armies and advanced weaponry. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared that Israel will not exist in 2040, but he’s been patient about how to achieve his life-defining goal. For example, he’s worked relentlessly to build a nuclear program, but he’s been willing to stay just on the cusp of building the bomb until the conditions are right.

For decades, both Israel and the United States were willing to tolerate the noose. Dismantling it seemed too hard and risky. That changed on Oct. 7. Israel learned, to its shock and dismay, that it lacked the capacity to anticipate and prevent murderous attacks. Suddenly the looming noose began to appear intolerable. Netanyahu, and the Israeli public generally, decided to respond to Oct. 7 not with the limited retribution campaign that many of us outside observers were supporting, but by attempting to dismantle the whole noose, including Hezbollah and the future possibility of Iranian nukes, and that now looks like the right call.

In this Case, War Was the Answer

Occasionally I see lawn signs asserting that “war is not the answer,” but here was a circumstance in which war was the answer. Here was a circumstance in which the raw power really mattered. Israel was able to beat the once feared Hezbollah because it is more effective and more powerful. Iran has responded feebly to the bombing raids not because of the kindness of its heart but because it is ineffective and less powerful.

While many people have overestimated Hezbollah’s and Iran’s capacities, Netanyahu and Trump — ruthless bullies both — seem to have some ability to smell weakness. Other American administrations imagined they could neuter revolutionary Iran through some sort of negotiation, but for over 40 years Iran has relentlessly refused a rapprochement with the West.

The final lesson to be learned, and this is one we seem to have to learn over and over again, is that our enemies are truly our enemies. In the 1930s a great portion of the British establishment traipsed over to Germany and returned claiming that Hitler was a decent enough chap you could do business with. They simply could not acknowledge to themselves the evil inherent in that man, even though he declared it openly in speeches and writings.

This same pattern of denial prevailed in the Western response to Lenin and Stalin, in the way some in the West refused to see Mao as the mass murderer he was, and in the Western response to Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. There are many people in the West who can’t believe that our enemies believe what they say they believe. They do not want to stare into the abyss and face the consequences of those realities. Netanyahu, for all has manifold moral failings, is willing to call Iranian reality by its true name and draw the obvious conclusions from that.

I’ll say it again: I detest Bibi and Trump. I worry that Team Trump lacks the attention span and competence to handle a complicated international crisis. But it would be a catastrophe if those of us who oppose Netanyahu and Trump concluded that we have to be against everything they are for. That would mean withdrawing from the world and letting the wolves run free.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By David Brooks/Amit Elkayam

c.2025 The New York Times Company