“After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations last month, it seemed almost certain that he would call for new elections early in 2013. Hardly anyone believed that he was able — or willing — to make much of an effort to pass a budget for the coming year, and the fact that he placed a “red line” for Iran by “next spring, at most by next summer,” and not, as previously stated, by this fall, signaled that he was seeking fresh legitimization from the Israeli electorate.

If Netanyahu is reelected — and while the polls leave little doubt that he will win a second straight term, nothing is quite certain with Israel’s volatile electorate and unpredictable regional challenges — he can proceed with whatever plans he has regarding a preemptive strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. Indeed, buoyed by an election victory and with the US elections well behind him, Netanyahu would have a much freer hand to act in the Iranian arena than he would have had this fall. And preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Netanyahu’s confidants claim, is his political raison d’être.”

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