Bennett to NYT: Israel ‘foolish’ to engage with Iran’s proxies rather than addressing root cause of the threat

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett tells the New York Times that he believes Israel has failed to address the root cause of the regional threats that it faces, and has instead become occupied by fighting Iran’s various proxies rather than tackling Tehran itself.

Employing his oft-used comparison between Iran and an octopus — Tehran being the head and its proxies the tentacles — Bennett says that “the head of the octopus is much weaker, much more vulnerable and feeble, than its arms.”

“So how foolish are we to engage in war with the arms when we could engage with the head?” he asks.

Iran has built “an empire of rockets and terror” surrounding Israel, the former prime minister says, warning that the only way to prevent the threat of Israel’s extinction is to “topple the Iranian regime before it fully acquires a nuclear weapon.”

Further criticizing the strategy Israel has employed throughout the last 10 months of war with Hamas,  Bennett tells the Times that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of “total victory” contradicts the reality on the ground.

“I see words that send one message and actions that are the contrary,” he says.

“I know there is a body count of Hamas combatants,” he says of Israel’s estimation that it has killed more than 15,000 terror operatives inside the Gaza Strip as of May. “When you count bodies, you are assuming a finite number of combatants, but you have a population of one million to draw on. They could have recruited another 10,000 in the meantime.”

Hinting at a planned return to politics, Bennett says “all the senior leadership of Israel, political and military, needs to be replaced.”