A major blow to the country’s image and the exceptionalism preached by Israel’s leader

Forecast: “A Look into the Future from September 2025” (published September 26, 2025, link)

S. Dragan:

Almost all countries are facing a kind of complete turnabout. For some, it will be dramatic. Israel is also beginning to change completely.

But all of this will take time, approximately from August to October 2026…

Forecast: “Geopolitical Events of October 2026 and Their Further Development. A Prospective Scenario for Many Major Geopolitical Players” (published October 4, 2026, link)

S. Dragan:

Yes, around October 16, 2026, there are indicators of significant tension and danger for Israel. For this country, the events taking place in mid-October 2026 appear highly fateful. This is a major blow to the country’s image and the exceptionalism preached by Israel’s leader.

From the second half of 2025 to the present—October 2026—a substantial turnabout has begun for many countries around the world. This also applies to Israel, which has been significantly affected by the war against Iran and, in general, the sharp escalation of the situation throughout the Middle East.

The country’s domestic and foreign policy situation deteriorated especially sharply on the eve of the elections scheduled for October 27, 2026.

“The events taking place in mid-October 2026 appear highly fateful for Israel”… “Around October 16, 2026, indicators of significant tension and danger for Israel materialized.” After October 16, 2026, the IDF in Israel was placed on the highest levels of readiness. Active preparations of bomb shelters and the entire civilian protection system are underway. Israeli media are promoting the idea that Iran will launch a preemptive missile strike against Israel in the near future.

However, many political analysts believe this may be disinformation beneficial to Netanyahu ahead of the elections scheduled for October 27, 2026. Provocative strikes against Israelis by some third party to the conflict are also not ruled out.

(@DHaiphongRU, October 18, 2026, “Iran CRUSHED Trump’s strike plan. Israel prepares for total war”)

In addition, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging U.S. President Donald Trump to resume their joint military operation against Iran and would like it to take place before the Knesset elections scheduled for October 27, 2026.

“Israel Wants to Repeat ‘The Lion’s Roar’: Benjamin Netanyahu Persuades the U.S. to Resume Strikes on Iran.”

In early October, Netanyahu instructed the military to prepare a plan for a large-scale offensive against Iran, but implementation of the plans was postponed because of U.S. President Donald Trump. The Financial Times reported this on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, citing sources.

On October 15, 2026, a “major blow to the country’s image” and directly to its leaders was delivered.

During a speech by Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Baku, representatives of several countries left the hall. This was reported by Yeni Şafak.

This occurred at the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), held in the Azerbaijani capital on October 15, 2026.

Those who left included members of the delegations of Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority. The Iranian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, was the first to leave. Diplomats from several other countries—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia—joined them.

Russia is represented at the summit by a delegation headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

There are currently 28 CICA member states.

A similar demonstration of negative attitudes toward Israel’s leadership took place at the UN General Assembly in New York in late September 2026.

The UN General Assembly turned into an arena of fierce confrontation over Israel. While protesters on the streets of New York demanded Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrest, delegations inside the building demonstratively left the hall. In response, Netanyahu staged a political show with pagers, promotion of “Starlink,” and sharp criticism of European leaders.

Once again, Israel “recalled” the “exceptionalism of the country” when a statement was made in the Israeli parliament that is already being called a challenge to the entire world order. A representative of the ruling Likud party, Hanoch Milwidsky, declared that generally accepted international norms should not apply to his country. According to him, the Jewish state lives by special rules beyond the understanding of the rest of the world. This speech became not merely another political attack but a reflection of the deep divide between Israel and most of the international community.

“For Israel, the events taking place in mid-October 2026 appear highly fateful. … Israel is beginning to change completely…”

And these changes concern not only the internal situation. To serve new priorities and declared interests “preached by Israel’s leader,” the country is initiating aggressive attacks against states it considers hostile, including, for example, Britain, Turkey, and a number of others.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the United Kingdom to a rogue state amid deteriorating relations between the two countries. According to him, the British government, in trying to secure the support of its political electorate, has embarked on a path of appeasing Israel’s adversaries and, as the head of the Israeli government put it, has spun out of control, becoming something akin to a rogue state.

Netanyahu also accused British authorities of criticizing Israel, which he called a defender of Western civilization, instead of confronting Iran and its allies. At the same time, the prime minister noted that Israel still considers Britain an ally, despite the disagreements between the countries.

Separately, Netanyahu criticized British authorities over the arrival of illegal migrants in small boats, stating that if Britain does not regain control of its borders, it may lose itself, though the country still has time to come to its senses and restore relations with Israel.

Netanyahu’s statements came amid a noticeable cooling of British-Israeli ties, and his comparison of London to a rogue state became one of the harshest wordings uttered by the head of the Israeli government toward a key Western partner.

Until recently, Iran alone remained Israel’s main strategic irritant in the Middle East. Tehran was a convenient and understandable adversary: a questionable nuclear program, Hezbollah and other Shiite proxies, Iraq, Yemen, and the long-standing logic of deterrence and strikes—all of this fit into a familiar framework. Israel explained its actions by the need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power and to destroy the infrastructure of its regional influence.

Now, however, a different emphasis is becoming increasingly visible in Israeli public rhetoric. Shikli stated that Erdogan’s Turkey and Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Syria cause Israel greater concern than Iran. In his view, the era of the Iranian “Shiite empire” is coming to an end, and it is being replaced by a new axis of the “Muslim Brotherhood” (banned in Russia and designated a terrorist organization. — “Kommersant”) represented by Turkey, Syria, and Qatar.

This means that Israel is now preparing for war with Turkey and other countries in the region.

The main figure in the election race, without any doubt, remains incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads the Likud party. However, his position and the “exceptionalism” he proclaims, as well as his declared “indispensability,” have noticeably weakened. While in previous elections Likud was consistently perceived as the dominant force in the right-wing camp, polls now show a different picture: Netanyahu’s party and its ruling-coalition allies together are not gaining the necessary 61 seats. Netanyahu himself remains subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, while also continuing to be a defendant in a lengthy corruption trial that began back in 2020. All these circumstances make him both the most recognizable figure of the campaign and the opposition’s main target.

There are many questions for Netanyahu over the events of October 7, 2023. He was accused of ignoring warnings about Hamas’s largest terrorist attack.

According to a book by journalists from Haaretz, one week before the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack, the president of the United Arab Emirates personally informed Benjamin Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a large-scale offensive against Israel, but the Jewish state’s prime minister did not respond to this warning.

As The Guardian emphasizes, this statement, made amid a bitter election campaign, prompted opposition leaders to call the prime minister “unfit” for office, although Netanyahu himself called the information an “absolute lie.”

According to Haaretz, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar warned a former Palestinian official that militants were preparing a “terrifying operation.” According to the book, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spoke with Netanyahu a week and a half before the attack and informed him that Hamas was planning a major operation. The allegations published by Haaretz journalists increase pressure on the Israeli prime minister, who had already faced harsh criticism for his actions before the October 7 attacks.

During that attack, Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage. Hundreds of Israelis, mostly military personnel, were killed during the ongoing hostilities in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. As a result of Israel’s retaliatory strike, most of Gaza was reduced to ruins, and the number of Palestinians killed exceeded 73,000.

Netanyahu’s relationship with D. Trump is also ambiguous today, as Trump has found himself in a serious political dead end because Israel drew the United States into the Persian Gulf conflict in February 2026.

Relations between the United States and Israel are experiencing their most serious crisis in many decades. Washington is increasingly at odds with Tel Aviv on issues of Iran and regional security, while among American politicians support for Israel no longer appears unconditional.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview with the American channel Newsmax on Thursday, October 15, 2026, declined to endorse the reelection of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite saying that “they” would like him to “intervene” in the upcoming Knesset elections.

Netanyahu is accused not only of the aforementioned problems in the Gaza Strip and with Iran, and in the Middle East overall, but also of the protest actions now sweeping Europe.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the France Unbowed party, accused Netanyahu of influencing elections in Marseille, Toulouse, Roubaix, and Paris.

In October 2026, French streets were gripped by protests accompanied by smashed shop windows and car arsons, while politicians debated the causes of the unrest. Against this backdrop, Mélenchon, a candidate for president of France, stated that what was happening was not the work of left-wing radical groups but of external forces—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…

Earlier, in September 2026, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez accused Israel of the influx of Africans into the country.

Overall, time will show how successfully Netanyahu handles his election problems and accusations against him, and whether Israel’s “turnabout” after the October 27, 2026 elections will be radical. There is very little time left.

To be continued…