Israel’s War Economy Is Running Out of Enemies - So They Made One Up

Right, so despite attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, Israel has apparently run out of wars to keep Netanyahu’s backside safe in power it seems — so this time they’ve decided to invent one. The IDF is now crying about a “developing threat from Iraq.” The loyal papers print it like scripture, but nobody mentions that Iraq hasn’t attacked Israel once — not the government, not the militias, not anyone. The only planes crossing that border have Israeli flags on them. Israeli news outlet Maariv says it’s about “defending the home front.” In the small print, it’s five and a half billion shekels for a new wall and a few well-connected contractors. Well where’s that money coming from with Israel’s economy increasingly going south? This isn’t security policy, it’s crisis cosplay — a state so addicted to war it’s now fighting its own imagination. Netanyahu says he’s keeping Israel safe. What he’s really keeping safe is himself and the lie that Israel’s still in control and only he can protect it. When you start bombing ghosts, you’ve really lost the plot though haven’t you?
Right, so Israel is inventing another war. Netanyahu has had a funny dream, and for all we know it could well have been one of those dreams given what is being spoken about now. This time the enemy isn’t Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis. It’s Iraq — a country that hasn’t fired a single verified shot at Israel, that shares no border with it, and that is still trying to rebuild from the last American war that flattened it. Yet, according to Israel’s security establishment, Baghdad now sits on the edge of launching a regional assault through Iranian-backed militias. Oh so it’s Iran again then? The claim appeared in Maariv on 24 October and has been attributed to “sources in the Northern Command.” Those sources said the IDF and the Mossad were preparing for “a developing threat to the Israeli home front from Iraq.” It was the kind of line that has kept Israel on a permanent war footing for two years — vague, unverifiable, and politically priceless.
Iraq as a state has never attacked Israel. A few militias based in Iraq — mainly within the self-styled Islamic Resistance in Iraq umbrella — have claimed occasional drone launches in solidarity with Gaza, but none have actually been independently verified or caused damage inside Israel. The only confirmed hostilities between the two countries run the other way: Israeli airstrikes on Iraqi soil, first in 2019 against Popular Mobilisation Forces depots and again earlier this year under “Operation Kalavi,” noted by Maariv itself. Maariv described Kalavi as an Israeli Air Force strike on ‘logistics centres in Iran on the Iraqi border’ said to be used by Iran-funded militias — but it has been questioned heavily as to whether it struck inside Iraq as well, reporting has been deliberately ambiguous on this event. The balance of force is not in doubt though — the only attacks that actually happened were Israeli.
The same Maariv article said Esmail Qaani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, had recently visited Iraq and met militia leaders. No evidence was offered. It also described a scenario in which those militias might one day launch missiles or drones at Israel, and even attempt “a ground manoeuvre that will start in Iraq and head to Syria — and from there possibly to the Israel-Jordan border.” That is roughly a thousand kilometres of desert and mountain through two other sovereign states. In military terms it is nonsense. In political terms it is a gift. A hypothetical enemy is the easiest kind to fight. But then for those of us who remember what has been said by Netanyahu on the matter of Greater Israel – such a notion is entirely in keeping with that doctrine.
Within the same column inches, the Ministry of Defence announced something far more tangible though: a 5.5 billion shekel project to build a 425-kilometre “multi-layered” barrier along Israel’s eastern frontier, from the southern Golan Heights to the Samar Sands north of Eilat. The tenders were already issued, the contractors chosen, the language bureaucratic. “Looking ahead to the emerging threats,” said Director-General Amir Baram, “we must act with a sense of urgency and strengthen the strategic grip on the eastern border.” That phrase — strategic grip — is the tell. This isn’t about protection. It’s about possession. The wall is being sold as a defensive measure against Iraq, but the fine print describes an integrated system of settlements, roads, and “industrial growth engines.” It’s a colonisation plan with a security budget.
This is how Israel’s wars now begin. Not with an attack, but with a press release. Not with evidence, but with a contract. Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and now Iraq — each front introduced through the same ritual: anonymous officials predicting an imminent threat, a government promising pre-emption, and the West nodding along. It’s a theatre of anticipation. Israel no longer reacts to war; it forecasts it like the weather, manufactures the proof, and builds the infrastructure to cash it in, driving up national debt and US borrowing to pay for it.
The pattern is clear in the record. On 1 April 2024 Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killing at least seven IRGC and Syrian officials. It was an act of war on diplomatic soil. Two months later Iran replied with a two-day missile and drone barrage aimed only at military sites. Operation True Promise I. No civilian casualties, no follow-up strikes. Tehran declared the matter closed. Israel called it “proof” of Iranian aggression. The same script played out in Yemen. When the Houthis blockaded Israeli-linked shipping in protest over Gaza, Israel responded with air raids on Hudaydah and other areas, rarely impacting the Houthis themselves who are very mobile, but certainly killing many civilians. The blockade widened, and Israel called that escalation “Iranian coordination.” In Lebanon, Israel’s daily air raids despite a supposed almost year long ceasefire are now routine. Each strike produces another justification for the next. Cause and effect have switched places.
Inside Israel the military is running on fumes though. The IDF told the Knesset Finance Committee in the last few days that it was “not prepared for new wars” without an emergency budget, a story I covered just yesterday. Defence spending has swallowed more than 9 percent of GDP. The extra cost of simultaneous operations since 2023 has come in at roughly 80 billion shekels. Generals warn of manpower exhaustion; reservists are on their third call-ups. Yet the government is still authorising new fronts here. This isn’t strategy. It’s desperation for survival.
Netanyahu’s coalition needs perpetual crisis to stay alive. The genocide in Gaza destroyed Israel’s moral capital abroad and split opinion at home. The economy is slowing; the courts are circling corruption cases again; even the generals are leaking dissent. A phantom enemy solves all of that. Fear buys time. Time keeps the coalition together. And every minute bought in panic can be converted into public money for construction, arms, or settlements. That is why Baram called the eastern barrier “a national mission.” It binds the military budget to the building industry, and both to the myth of make-believe dangers.
There’s another layer to this. Israel can’t reach Iraq without crossing Jordan or Syria. Jordan is effectively an Israeli dependency — supplied with Israeli water, gas, and intelligence. Its monarchy relies on Western protection and fears Israel’s wrath more than its own public. Syria, by contrast, is already being bombed weekly by Israel as one of its ready made war fronts, even though the Al-Qaeda cast-offs now running the show there wanted ties with Israel not war, but ties won’t keep Netanyahu in power, not to them anyway. So any strike on “Iraqi militias” would in reality be another incursion into Syrian airspace or even Jordanian. Israel knows that. The Maariv story is the legal and moral groundwork for those future violations.
Iran’s position, meanwhile, is verifiably defensive. Iran’s Iraqi-aligned militias “largely sat out” the June Iran–Israel conflict. There were no direct attacks on Israel from Iraqi soil. Even Western analysts say Baghdad avoided involvement. The ECFR’s 2025 briefing described Iraq as “caught between Tehran and Washington but seeking to avoid direct war.” Yet Israeli newspapers talk about “Iranian proxies massing.” The difference between restraint and rhetoric is the distance between a fact and a budget line.
The deeper motive isn’t military at all. It’s psychological and economic. A country that defines itself through threat needs a threat to define itself. Every new front revives the illusion of control. Netanyahu’s own terror is political extinction. The Gaza genocide has destroyed his image abroad and at home; his ministers compete to sound more apocalyptic than him. If he ends a war, he loses the coalition. If he starts another, he buys time. Iraq is his next time-buyer. The barrier project converts that anxiety into contracts. It’s the latest proof that Israeli security policy has become a self-licking machine — war creates fear, fear creates funding, funding sustains war.
There is a term for this in Israeli strategic culture: mabam — the campaign between wars. It used to mean keeping enemies off balance. Now it means keeping the public distracted. When generals brief that “Iranian proxies” are active in Iraq, what they’re really announcing is another round of state-funded theatre. The military pretends to defend; the contractors pretend to build; the politicians pretend to lead. Everyone gets paid except the truth.
What makes this moment different is that the mask is slipping. The IDF’s admission of weakness was not supposed to be public. Outlets such as Naharnet and the Jerusalem Post reported it because the budget request leaked. The numbers don’t lie. Israel is fighting on five fronts, running an almost double-digit defence deficit, and facing war-crimes scrutiny at the International Court of Justice. When a state this overstretched starts inventing enemies, it’s not projecting power; it’s confessing the collapse.
The Maariv article shows how policy manufacture works. You cite an Iranian name — Qaani. You invoke militias — Hamas, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujabaa. You describe capabilities — long-range drones. You admit none of this has actually happened, but you build a 5.5 billion shekel wall just in case. Then you remind readers that these militias once targeted US forces, as if that alone makes them Israel’s war now. It’s storytelling for contractors. It’s also deterrence through PR: announce the wall, hope the announcement itself substitutes for security.
Jordan’s role exposes another truth. The kingdom isn’t just scared; it’s captured. By walling its side of the valley, Israel is turning Jordan into a buffer colony — a corridor for overflights, intelligence exchange, and border policing. Amman will call it cooperation; Tel Aviv will call it sovereignty. The physical wall cements that imbalance. The project’s official description lists “Zionist-security settlement” alongside “security-civilian infrastructure.” That pairing tells you everything. The border is not being fortified; it’s being absorbed.
This isn’t a departure from the old Greater Israel dream; it’s perhaps a new more administrative version. You don’t redraw maps anymore; you redraw tenders. You expand not by invasion but by integration — power lines, roads, surveillance grids. The eastern barrier achieves through engineering what the 20th century never could through war. It extends control without admitting conquest.
And yet the contradiction is blatant. The government preaching security is the same one whose actions have made Israel less secure than at any point in its history. Gaza is rubble but not pacified. Hezbollah still exist. The Houthis still control the Red Sea chokepoint and will exercise that whenever they wish. Iran hasn’t been deterred, they kicked Israel’s arse for 12 days. Inside Israel, the draft burden and economic collapse are fracturing the social contract. What keeps the state functioning is inertia and fear — and both are finite resources.
When Maariv talks about an “emerging threat” from Iraq, what it really describes is the Israeli government’s emerging terror of accountability. The world has begun to see through the self-defence myth. The ICJ’s interim ruling on starvation warfare in Gaza opened the door to complicity cases. Domestic protests are returning. The Iraq phantom is Netanyahu’s decoy: as long as the spotlight points east, no one looks at Rafah, or at the food convoys still blocked, or at the economy bleeding out.
There’s a phrase soldiers use when a mission loses meaning: “we’re just burning daylight.” That’s what Israel’s strategy has become — a campaign to fill the hours between the last atrocity and the next excuse. The army says it needs another wall; the government says it needs another war. But the only thing either of them are defending is their own fiction.
The consequence is already visible. Investors are pulling capital. Draft dodging is rising. The diplomatic circle that once called Israel indispensable now calls it unpredictable. Even Washington has stopped pretending the wars are sustainable. When your allies begin to question your competence rather than your cause, you’ve crossed a line no budget can fix.
So the eastern barrier will be built, the headlines will fade, and the desert will fill with concrete. But the fear it’s meant to contain is inside the country, not outside it. Israel is walling itself in — against reality, against consequence, against the day when even its own citizens stop believing the next threat briefing. Netanyahu’s last war isn’t with Iran or Iraq or anyone beyond the horizon. It’s with the truth. And that is the one enemy he can’t bomb into silence.
For more on the dire state of Israel’s economy making the affordability of all of this the biggest joke of all right now, check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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