The pessimistic/skeptical side of me is contemplating the horrible notion that the Israeli intelligence "failure" was not that at all. In his quest for continued power and political survival, Netanyahu has gone full on authoritarian in the last 5 years. Like all good (bad?) authoritarians, he believes he alone knows what's best for Israel and that all opposition must be silenced or made irrelevant. I'm thinking this could be a "wag the dog" deal with Hamas gone terribly awry.
Netanyahu is like Cheney and will be very disappointed if he can't blame Iran and widen the war.
@Sr0bi OTOH, the "case for war" in Iraq was always extremely weak and tenuous. Iran is a stone cold antagonist with direct funding and support ties to a wide variety of terrorist organizations, chief among them being Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, a deep thorn in Israel's side for decades. I don't think he wants to widen the war because there's not much he can do directly to Iran, even with US support.
@hallmarc
Well in that regard we are fortunate that Tom Cotton is not POTUS or Nat'l Security advisor.