With Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps publicly vowing to kill him, Benjamin Netanyahu is not just Israel's prime minister right now — he is also its most high-value target. As Operation Roaring Lion enters its third week with no end in sight, Israel has activated some of the most intensive personal and national security measures in its modern history. Here is a full breakdown of what Israel is doing to protect its leader, its people, and its strategic interests.

Netanyahu's Personal Security: Drones, Armoured Vehicles and Fortified Safe Houses

The threat to Netanyahu is not theoretical. In October 2024, Hezbollah launched a drone attack directly targeting his private residence in Caesarea. Two drones were intercepted; a third struck the building. Netanyahu himself was not home, but the message was unmistakable — the Israeli Prime Minister is a marked man.

Now, with Iran's IRGC making public assassination threats in March 2026, Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency has dramatically stepped up its protection operation. Surveillance drones have been deployed over Netanyahu's official Jerusalem residence around the clock. Senior ministers and cabinet security members have been issued armoured vehicles — a measure reserved only for those assessed to be at the highest threat level.

The protection does not stop there. Several senior ministers' families have been quietly moved out of their homes and relocated to fortified apartments. Others have been temporarily housed in hotels. Behind closed doors, ministers who were not included in these arrangements have reportedly voiced frustration over what they see as an unequal distribution of security resources.

The Shin Bet has also tightened instructions on mobile phone usage across the entire cabinet, citing assessments that Iranian intelligence may attempt cyberattacks and phishing operations targeting senior Israeli officials.

$827 Million Emergency Defence Budget: Israel Opens the Vault

Fighting a war on this scale costs money — and Israel is not holding back. On March 15, 2026, Israel approved an emergency budget allocation of 2.6 billion shekels, equivalent to approximately 827 million US dollars, specifically for urgent military purchases. The package was approved by cabinet ministers in a telephone meeting and will be drawn from Israel's total 2026 state budget of 222 billion dollars, which the Knesset is expected to formally adopt by March 31.

The government has not publicly specified which weapons systems or equipment the funds will cover, but the context makes the priorities obvious. Since February 28, Iran has launched over 250 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory. Israel's missile defence systems — Iron Dome, David's Sling, and the Arrow system — have intercepted the vast majority, but the relentless pace of attacks is placing enormous strain on interceptor stockpiles.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar publicly dismissed reports suggesting Israel was running low on missile interceptors, saying clearly: the answer is no. But the emergency budget approval tells a different story — Israel is preparing for a long campaign and is ensuring its defence industrial pipeline stays fully stocked.

The Missile Shield: Three Lines of Defence

Israel's layered air defence architecture is the backbone of its civilian protection strategy. Each system targets a different category of threat.

Iron Dome intercepts short-range rockets and artillery shells at lower altitudes — the same system that protected Israeli cities during the Gaza conflict and the Lebanon war.

David's Sling handles medium to long-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles — the primary threat from Iran's arsenal.

The Arrow System — Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 — targets long-range ballistic missiles at high altitudes, including exo-atmospheric interceptions outside the Earth's atmosphere.

Together, these three systems form a near-impenetrable shield. Since the war began, Iran has fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israeli cities daily, and the military has confirmed that the overwhelming majority have been intercepted. The civilian death toll, while not zero, has been dramatically lower than Iran likely intended.

Striking First: Degrading Iran's Launch Capability

Israel's security strategy is not purely defensive. The most effective protection, from Israel's perspective, is eliminating the threat at its source before missiles even launch.

The IDF has confirmed it killed two senior Iranian intelligence officials from the Khatam al-Anbiya Emergency Command — the nerve centre coordinating Iran's military operations. Netanyahu confirmed at his March 12 press conference that Israeli strikes had also eliminated a senior Iranian nuclear scientist.

Netanyahu framed it bluntly at the press conference: the February 28 strikes had prevented Iran from moving its nuclear and ballistic missile projects underground — a window that was closing rapidly and that Israel could not afford to miss. He declared Israel is now "stronger than ever," pointing to severe damage inflicted on the IRGC and Basij forces.

Nationwide Civil Defence: Shelters, Sirens and a Nation on Alert

For ordinary Israeli citizens, the security measures are deeply personal and daily. Air raid sirens have sounded across Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, and large parts of southern and central Israel on a near-daily basis since February 28. Residents have become accustomed to rushing into bomb shelters — underground parking garages, reinforced stairwells, designated public shelters — within the 90-second warning window the missile alert system provides.

Schools in high-risk areas have moved classes to sheltered floors. Public events have been modified or cancelled. The national psyche has shifted into a wartime rhythm that older Israelis recognise from previous conflicts but that younger generations are experiencing for the first time at this scale.

An overwhelming 82 percent of the Israeli public, according to a March 2026 survey, supports the ongoing military operations — with 93 percent of Jewish Israelis behind the war effort. That domestic unity is itself a form of national security, giving Netanyahu the political cover to maintain the campaign without facing the kind of internal fracture that could weaken Israel's resolve.

What Comes Next

Israel's army chief has said plainly that this war will continue for a long time. The government shelved its controversial ultra-Orthodox draft exemption law to fast-track the 2026 defence budget — a sign that the entire political system, regardless of internal differences, understands the gravity of the moment.

Netanyahu told the Iranian people last week: "We are standing by your side." He told his own people: this war will be "recorded in the annals of Israel." Whether that record ultimately reads as a victory or a cautionary tale remains to be seen.

What is certain right now is this — Israel is spending every tool at its disposal, from surveillance drones outside the prime minister's bedroom window to 827 million dollars in emergency weapons procurement, to ensure it survives this war on its own terms.

The iron shield is up. The question is how long it can hold.

The Middle East is in the most dangerous moment of this century. What began as a joint US-Israel military strike on February 28, 2026 has now spiralled into a widening regional conflict — and this weekend, Tehran crossed a new line.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps publicly vowed to pursue and kill Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Iran's state news agency posting a chilling statement on X — calling Netanyahu a "child-killer" and threatening his life directly. The statement came after rumours spread over the weekend that Netanyahu had already been killed, forcing his office to release a statement calling the reports entirely false.

This is the war nobody fully predicted — and it is not over.

How It Started: Operation Roaring Lion

On February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States jointly launched Operation Roaring Lion, with Netanyahu announcing that the aim was to put a permanent end to the threat from the Iranian regime. The IDF struck targets of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij paramilitary force, alongside US military strikes on ballistic missile sites threatening both Israel and American forces across the region.

Netanyahu declared the goal was to remove the existential threat posed by the Iranian regime, stating that the joint action would create the conditions for the Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.

This was not a sudden decision. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz disclosed on March 4 that Israel had initially planned to strike Iran in mid-2026, but moved the timeline forward. Katz also revealed that Netanyahu had set an objective of targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as far back as November 2025.

Where Things Stand Right Now — March 16, 2026

The conflict has now entered its third week and shows no sign of slowing down.

Iran has continued firing missiles at Israel. Israel in return targeted key members of Iran's leadership, and the IDF confirmed it had eliminated two senior Iranian intelligence officials from the Khatam al-Anbiya Emergency Command.

Despite US and Israeli attacks against Iran's missile launchers and stockpiles, Iran has continued striking Israel with round-the-clock ballistic missile and drone attacks, also hitting Arab neighbours in the Gulf region, driving a sharp spike in global oil prices.

Netanyahu held his first press conference since the war began on March 12. He confirmed Israel had killed a senior Iranian nuclear scientist and said the campaign was going better than expected. When asked whether Israel would target Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Netanyahu said he would not rule anything out.

The Regime Change Question

The central strategic question of this war is what victory actually looks like.

Netanyahu's messaging has remained fixated on regime change in Iran since day one. Analysts note that for Netanyahu — seeking to recover politically from the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack — anything less than regime change could be seen as a failure by the Israeli public.

But analysts are increasingly sceptical. With no evidence of a popular Iranian uprising and the Trump administration appearing to back away from its own regime change demands, it remains unclear whether Israel has a clear endgame plan or what its fallback position might be.

A former Israeli national security adviser noted that if Israel and the US drop regime change as a stated goal, they will instead pursue objectives easier to define and measure — such as further degrading Iran's missile systems and nuclear programme.

The Nuclear Problem Is Not Solved Yet

The US-Israeli operations in February 2026 confirmed that earlier strikes had not succeeded in destroying the Iranian nuclear programme entirely. Iran still holds approximately 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium stored in underground tunnels and refused, in pre-war talks with the United States, to export its stockpiles.

The thinking in Jerusalem was clear — waiting would only allow Iran to rebuild its nuclear and missile capabilities to a point of no return. The window to act was now or never.

Kharg Island and the Global Oil Risk

The war is no longer just a Middle Eastern conflict. It is a global economic threat.

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz confirmed that President Trump is weighing strikes on oil infrastructure at Kharg Island, Iran's key oil export hub, saying Trump is not going to take any options off the table. Trump previously directed US Central Command to bomb Kharg Island's military infrastructure while leaving oil facilities intact — but that position could change quickly.

If that calculation shifts, global oil markets face a shock of historic proportions.

What Happens Next

Israel's army chief Eyal Zamir has said the war will likely continue for a long time. A March 2026 survey found that 82 percent of the Israeli public supports ongoing military operations, giving Netanyahu significant domestic political cover to continue.

But a former IDF strategic planning director has warned that neither the US nor Israel has set out a realistic exit strategy — and that without one, there is no exit.

The Iran-Israel war of 2026 is no longer a regional skirmish. It is a conflict with the potential to reshape the entire Middle East and the global economy alongside it. The IRGC's threat to kill Netanyahu this weekend is the latest reminder that this war has entered deeply personal and dangerously unpredictable territory.

The world is watching. And nobody knows how this ends.

Ten days into the most consequential military confrontation in the Persian Gulf since the Iran-Iraq War, the balance of naval power in the region has been fundamentally and perhaps permanently altered. The United States has sunk or struck more than 20 Iranian warships. Iran's naval headquarters has been "largely destroyed," in President Trump's own words. The Iranian navy — the force that had threatened for years to close the Strait of Hormuz and hold the world's oil supply hostage — has, according to CENTCOM, been functionally eliminated from the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman.

And yet the war is escalating, not ending. Iran's retaliation — more than 500 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones in the first 48 hours, striking Gulf states that were not even belligerents — has exceeded US expectations. Kharg Island, the tiny terminal in the northern Persian Gulf through which 90% of Iran's crude oil exports flow, has been struck. Qatar's Ras Laffan — the world's largest LNG export facility — has been hit and halted. Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery, one of the biggest in the Middle East, shut down temporarily after an Iranian drone strike. The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's oil flows daily, has come to a near standstill.

This is no longer a war being fought over Iran's nuclear programme, or Israel's security, or Trump's definition of American interests alone. It is a war being fought over the energy architecture of the 21st century — and every country that fills its tank, pays its electricity bill, or cooks its food with LPG is, whether it realises it or not, a stakeholder in its outcome.

The Naval War: From 9 Ships to "No Navy at All"

The naval dimension of Operation Epic Fury moved faster than almost any analyst predicted. When the US-Israeli strikes began on Saturday February 28, 2026, Iran's navy was a credible — if asymmetric — regional force. The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) and the IRGC Naval Forces together operated a fleet of frigates, corvettes, submarines, and hundreds of fast-attack craft specifically designed to swarm and overwhelm adversaries in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

By Sunday March 1, Trump was posting on Truth Social: "I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important. We are going after the rest. They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters."

US Central Command officials said that an Iranian Jamaran-class corvette was struck by US forces at the start of Operation Epic Fury, noting "the ship is currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman at a Chah Bahar pier." The Jamaran-class corvettes are among Iran's most capable surface combatants — domestically built, equipped with anti-ship missiles, and designed specifically for operations in and around Hormuz.

By March 5, CENTCOM confirmed it had struck or sunk over 20 Iranian ships, with the US military saying there were no Iranian warships remaining in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, or the Gulf of Oman. In a separate action that carried the conflict into the Indian Ocean, the US torpedoed an Iranian naval ship in international waters in the Indian Ocean, with Sri Lanka's navy rescuing 32 people after receiving a distress call from the Iranian vessel IRIS Dena.

Trump stated the US had knocked out Iran's navy, air force, and telecommunications, and that the operation "had to be done" because the country was "very close to a nuclear weapon." The Pentagon added that Israel and the US would soon have complete control of Iranian skies.

Tehran's response to the loss of its navy was characteristically defiant. Iran warned the US would "bitterly regret" the torpedo attack on the IRIS Dena, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that Iran had not asked for a ceasefire.

Kharg Island: The Oil Terminal That Could Change Everything

Of all the targets struck in the first ten days of Operation Epic Fury, none carries greater strategic weight than Kharg Island.

Kharg Island is the largest and most important hub through which roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports flow into world markets. It sits at the epicenter of global energy security during a moment of military escalation. The island has numerous loading berths, jetties, remote mooring points and tens of millions of barrels of crude storage capacity — handling export volumes exceeding 2 million barrels a day in recent years, almost entirely destined for Chinese refiners.

Explosions were reported on Kharg Island on Saturday February 28, according to Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency, though no further details were provided. Satellite imagery showed Iran continuing to load crude onto tankers at its Kharg Island terminal on Monday March 2, two days after the strikes — with one very-large crude carrier moored at a loading jetty — but no satellite coverage was available after that date, leaving the terminal's current status unclear.

The strategic calculus around Kharg is among the most consequential of the entire conflict. Approximately 90% of Iran's crude exports passed through this single point, with the majority destined for Chinese refiners. The near-total loss of that terminal would collapse Iran's oil export revenue stream almost entirely in the near term, creating a potential annual revenue shortfall exceeding $50 billion.

But the dilemma cuts both ways. Iran still has the option of destroying Kharg itself before US forces can seize it — a move that would send oil prices toward $120 per barrel and impose massive costs on the US, Gulf allies, and global markets, signaling a pain tolerance higher than Washington's. The question of whether Iran will sacrifice its primary revenue source to deny America strategic leverage is the most dangerous open variable in the conflict.

The Retaliation: Gulf Energy Infrastructure Under Fire

Iran's response to the destruction of its navy and the strikes on its leadership has been a broad, escalating campaign of drone and missile attacks across the Gulf — targeting not just US military installations but civilian and energy infrastructure across states that were not parties to the original conflict.

Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery — one of the world's largest oil refining complexes — was forced to halt operations after debris from intercepted Iranian drones caused a small fire. Qatar's Ministry of Defence reported that Iranian drones had targeted an energy facility in Ras Laffan belonging to QatarEnergy, the world's largest LNG producer. QatarEnergy shut down LNG production. Many downstream products including urea, polymers, methanol, aluminium, and others were also halted.

The halt in LNG production at Ras Laffan sent European gas prices surging to a three-year high, with Dutch front-month futures trading 45% higher.

A fire broke out at Mussafah Fuel Terminal in southwest Abu Dhabi after it was struck by a drone. Falling debris from a drone interception caused a fire at the Fujairah Oil Terminal along the eastern coast of the UAE. Multiple Iranian drones struck fuel tanks at the port of Duqm, Oman, with at least one direct hit on a fuel storage tank causing an explosion.

Iran's IRGC naval forces, even as their surface fleet was being systematically destroyed, continued threatening shipping. Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. A security official warned that anyone attempting passage would be set on fire by IRGC heroes. Traffic through the strait slowed to a near-standstill, with 150 freight ships including many oil tankers stalled.

Since the US and Israel launched strikes, global crude oil benchmarks surged around 20%. Brent crude initially opened at $81.49 on March 2, pushing back close to $80 following news of the Ras Tanura strike. European gas prices surged 45%.

The Diplomatic Dimension: Pezeshkian's Apology, Larijani's Defiance

Iran's political response to the war has been internally contradictory — a sign of a regime whose chain of command has been severely disrupted by the killing of Khamenei and dozens of senior officials.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Iran's neighbours that he respected their sovereignty, saying "We tried, with your help and through diplomacy, to avoid war" but that the "American-Zionist military attack left us with no option other than defending ourselves." He insisted that Iran's strikes had targeted only US military bases and facilities, not neighbouring countries' civilian infrastructure.

But within hours of the apology, Pezeshkian said Iran was attacking "legitimate targets" in Gulf nations, insisting the strikes were "exclusively against targets and facilities that are the origin and source of aggressive actions against the Iranian nation."

Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, posted that Trump must "pay the price" for the strikes. Trump dismissed him entirely: "I have no idea what he's talking about, who he is. I couldn't care less," telling CBS News that Larijani had "already been defeated."

The contradictions between Pezeshkian's apology and the continued drone strikes on Gulf states reflect what Pezeshkian himself acknowledged in a March 7 statement: apologising for strikes on neighbouring countries and attributing them to "miscommunication in the ranks," underscoring the limited control exercised by Iranian civilian leaders over the IRGC.

The Global Energy Shock: What It Means for India

For India, the combination of a closed Hormuz, a struck Kharg Island, and halted Qatari LNG production represents a near-worst-case energy security scenario that planners have war-gamed but hoped never to face.

India, with fewer strategic crude reserves and with only around nine to ten days of stocks, is more exposed to prolonged disruption than China. Roughly 40% of India's crude oil imports transit the Strait of Hormuz. So does a significant portion of India's LNG imports. The 10 million Indians working in the Gulf, who send home $50 billion annually in remittances, are now navigating a war zone.

The US Treasury moved to partially address India's crude supply crunch: the Treasury Department issued a 30-day waiver to allow Indian refineries to purchase Russian oil, previously under US sanctions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described it as a "deliberately short-term measure" to enable oil to keep flowing into global markets.

This waiver — simultaneously an act of economic pragmatism and geopolitical leverage — effectively formalises what India had been doing informally: buying Russian crude at scale. But a 30-day waiver is not an energy security strategy. It is a breathing room measure for a conflict with no visible end date.

Trump ordered the US Development Finance Corporation to provide political risk insurance for maritime trade through the Gulf, and said the US Navy would escort ships if necessary. Lloyd's of London said it was "engaging constructively" with the Trump administration on the question, but analysts at JPMorgan warned that the DFC likely does not have the capacity to insure the more than 300 oil tankers currently anchored near the strait.

The Broader War: Hezbollah, Lebanon, and the March 8 Escalation

The naval and energy dimensions of the conflict exist within a broader regional war that is simultaneously being fought in Tehran, southern Lebanon, and the skies above the Gulf.

Israel authorised a ground invasion of Lebanon on March 3. Israeli forces struck the Ramada hotel in Beirut's seafront Raouche area on March 8, targeting what it described as "key commanders" in the Quds Force.

The US and Israel struck Iran's Assembly of Experts as they were meeting to elect Khamenei's successor. Israel also killed Daoud Alizadeh, the commander of the Quds Force's Lebanon branch, in Tehran, and detained a dozen Hezbollah members in response to a missile strike.

Debris from an airstrike damaged Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, prompting UNESCO to issue a statement that damaging its property violates international law.

More than 1,300 people in Iran have been killed as a result of the ongoing fighting, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. The WHO identified 13 Iranian health infrastructure sites that had been struck.

Russia has been providing Iran with intelligence about targets, according to independent confirmation by NPR. China has sent an envoy to the Middle East urging both sides to return to negotiations, driven by concern over its own energy supply — one-third of China's crude oil comes from Persian Gulf countries through the Strait of Hormuz, and China buys 80% of Iran's crude oil exports.

Kharg Island's Future: Leverage, Destruction, or Stalemate?

The endgame of Operation Epic Fury remains genuinely unclear — which is itself a source of significant market anxiety. Trump has offered multiple, shifting rationales for the war: preventing Iran's nuclear weapons capability, protecting Israel, regime change by supporting the Iranian opposition, pre-empting an imminent Iranian attack. These goals require different levels of military action and imply different exit conditions.

The one strategic asset that could serve as both leverage and endgame is Kharg Island. Control it, and the US controls Iran's primary revenue stream. Destroy it (or allow Iran to destroy it), and the global oil market faces a supply shock of historic proportions.

The entire strategy of using Kharg as leverage rests on the assumption that the Iranians would rather accept American control over the terminal than destroy it themselves. Iran's leadership has just watched its Supreme Leader assassinated and dozens of senior officials killed. This is a regime that sees compromising core principles as more dangerous to its long-term survival than short-term devastation.

For now, the oil is still — just barely — moving. Satellites showed tankers at Kharg on March 2. The Strait has slowed but not fully stopped. The LNG from Ras Laffan has been suspended, but Qatar's reserves give it short-term flexibility. The world is operating on borrowed time in the Persian Gulf.

The war that began ten days ago with the killing of a supreme leader is now a conflict whose outcome will be measured not just in casualties and territorial control, but in whether the world's most important energy chokepoint remains open — and who gets to decide.

Key Takeaways

• Operation Epic Fury (US) and Operation Roaring Lion (Israel) began February 28, 2026; Khamenei killed on Day 1.
• The US has sunk or struck 20+ Iranian warships; no Iranian naval vessels remain in the Persian Gulf, Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman as of March 5; Iran's naval HQ "largely destroyed."
• The IRIS Dena was torpedoed in the Indian Ocean; 32 crew rescued by Sri Lanka.
• Kharg Island (handles 90% of Iran's crude exports) was struck on February 28; satellite imagery March 2 showed tankers still loading but no coverage since.
• Ras Laffan LNG (Qatar) halted production after drone strike; European gas prices surged ~45% to a three-year high.
• Ras Tanura (Saudi Aramco 550,000 bpd refinery) shut temporarily after Iranian drone debris; Fujairah, Duqm, Mussafah terminals also hit.
• Strait of Hormuz effectively closed: 150+ tankers stalled; crude up ~20%; insurance withdrawn.
• US Treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing Indian refineries to buy Russian oil.
• Iran's retaliation hit US military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, UAE; Iranian strikes also hit civilian hotels, airports, Amazon data centres.
• 1,300+ Iranians killed (Red Crescent); 6 US troops killed; Russia providing targeting intelligence to Iran; China urging ceasefire to protect its own energy supply.