In the middle of a 13-months-long, two-theatre war in Gaza and Lebanon, and a spiralling military engagement with Iran, the prime minister of Israel saw fit to dismiss the defence minister, Yoav Gallant. In his place he appointed a career politician, one Israel Katz, who was the foreign minister – not that anyone in Israel noticed him then.

Katz has zero defence credentials, zero credibility with the military top brass, and zero experience in managing such a huge and complex system. That’s on-brand Netanyahu; under him, four defence ministers have been fired or resigned.

This is not an isolated event. Netanyahu has always surrounded himself with eminently underqualified sycophants who never challenge or threaten him. But now, after a series of military successes and high-profile assassinations – including the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah; Hamas’s political chair, Ismail Haniyeh, and its leader, Yahya Sinwar – Netanyahu felt empowered to dismiss Gallant, a career major-general turned politician. This recklessness must be viewed in two contexts: Netanyahu’s state of mind and the timing of the dismissal.

In terms of his mindset, Netanyahu has delusions of grandeur; he believes he can reshape the Middle East by toppling the regime in Iran, and remaking........

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