In the 39 years since the Islamic revolution ended the decades-old strategic alliance that had existed between Iran and Israel, the two countries have been at undeclared war. But in all their years of enmity, the conflict has always been an indirect one. Iran has financed and directed proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and to lesser degrees, Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad – to take on Israel. On its side, Israel has waged a clandestine campaign, using assassinations, sabotage and cyberwarfare to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme and arms shipments.

This year, the Iran-Israel war has suddenly come out in to the open, with both sides directly challenging each other on the ground and in the skies above Syria. In February Iran sent a drone carrying explosives in to Israeli airspace, where it was promptly shot down. In the months since, Israel has carried out a series of airstrikes on Iranian bases and weapon depots within Syria. On Wednesday night Iranian forces retaliated with a salvo of rockets against Israeli army positions on the Golan Heights. Israel responded immediately with its largest series of airstrikes on Syria since 1974.

But neither side actually wants to go to war. Iran, which has invested billions in ensuring Bashar al-Assad’s survival, is interested in creating a balance of deterrence against Israel by building permanent bases in Syria. Israel wants to prevent that from happening, and its leadership believes it could perhaps achieve even more, without going to war.

For the past seven years, since the start of the war in Syria, Israel has pursued a dual policy towards the conflict tearing apart its northern neighbour. Officially, it has not taken sides and maintained that it wants to avoid being sucked in at all costs. Unofficially, while never having a clear preference between the Assad regime and the disparate array of rebel groups fighting it, Israel was carrying out periodic airstrikes against Hezbollah, which was in Syria to prop Assad up. These airstrikes had little to do with the Syrian war – they targeted Hezbollah convoys and depots of Iranian-supplied weapons that Israeli intelligence believe were destined for the Shia movement’s arsenal in Lebanon. Israel rarely acknowledged that it was behind the strikes.

But now everything is changing. Iran and Israel are facing off openly. And in official statements Israel is directly blaming Iran’s Islamic revolutionary guards corps (IRGC). Specifically, they mention the IRGC’s elite expeditionary Quds force and its commander Qassem Suleimani, in the knowledge that there is a power struggle in Tehran between the IRGC faction and its rivals, led by President Hassan Rouhani. The IRGC generals insist that Iran should continue investing in building up its bases in Syria, while Rouhani’s faction believe that the money would be better spent at home. Israel is hoping to highlight the fact that Iran’s scarce resources are being wasted on foreign military adventures.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, believes that the fissure in the Iranian leadership could lead to a serious crisis in Tehran, exacerbated by the local economy being on the brink of meltdown, with the Iranian currency in freefall. Add to the mix Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to pull out of the nuclear agreement with Iran and his promise to impose new sanctions on the regime, and Netanyahu sees a recipe for regime change – though at present he only speaks about it in private.

Netanyahu, who began his public career as an Israeli diplomat in the mid-1980s in Ronald Reagan’s Washington, is at heart still a cold warrior (though he has a good working relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin). He subscribes to the view that the economic pressure and hi-tech arms race imposed by Reagan and Margaret Thatcher led directly to the Soviet Union’s economic ruin and ultimate downfall. He envisages a similar scenario, on a smaller scale, for Iran.

Despite his image, Netanyahu is not a warmonger. He is the most risk-averse of Israeli leaders, averse to making war or peace. He doesn’t believe in traditional diplomacy but in combining economic pressure and military deterrence. Together with the ascendant hawkish faction in the Trump administration, he is convinced that new sanctions and the attrition of Iranian forces in Syria will force Iran’s leaders to capitulate and could even bring about their downfall. And he’s prepared to risk another war in the Middle East to prove he’s right.

• Anshel Pfeffer is a journalist for Ha’aretz. He is the author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu