By Lazar Berman
Monday, June 22, 2026
Israel’s stance on the emerging U.S.-Iran memorandum of
understanding is no secret. And it’s not limited to the likes of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and his circle.
“Trump signs an agreement that funnels billions to the
Ayatollahs’ regime, leaves the nuclear infrastructure intact, preserves the
ballistic threat as is, and throws a lifeline to the murderous regime in
Tehran,” Yair Golan, a former Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of staff who
now heads the left-wing Democrats Party, wrote of the deal.
Opposition figures like Golan are undoubtedly using the
opportunity to dent Netanyahu’s political prospects ahead of elections later
this year. But his denunciation accurately captures the country’s prevailing
attitude toward the outcome of the Iran war, which for Israelis was the
culmination of a difficult two-and-a-half years of war against the Iranian axis
that began with Hamas’ October 7 massacre. Israelis now fear that the U.S. is
pawning off not only their security interests, but also those of Washington
itself and its Arab allies, for the sake of a deal with their bitter adversary.
It’s almost unimaginable to Israelis that the
post-October 7 wars, which have had their setbacks but which have seen Israel’s
position steadily improve and that of Iran erode, should end with what they see
as a self-imposed defeat by President Donald Trump.
After the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel, the
country slowly found its military footing. The Israeli military smashed through
the defenses Hamas spent 17 years constructing across the Gaza Strip and killed
both Hamas leaders and tens of thousands of Hamas fighters.
Hezbollah joined the assault against Israel on October 8,
forcing tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes and opening a secondary
front that saw almost a year of cross-border fire as the IDF focused its ground
operations on Gaza. But when a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children in the Golan
Heights in July 2024, Israel finally went on the offensive in Lebanon against
Iran’s most capable proxy force. The Israeli campaign was devastatingly
effective: Hezbollah’s political leaders and military commanders were
eliminated, and thousands of fighters were taken out of the ranks by an
explosive beeper and walkie-talkie
operation.
In a few short weeks, Hezbollah agreed to a humiliating
ceasefire. A new anti-Hezbollah government came to power in Beirut, while
Israel continued to take out hundreds of Hezbollah fighters as the shaken and
bruised Shiite group chose not to respond.
The impairment of one cog in Iran’s regional proxy
network had fatal
ripple effects for another. The weakened Bashar al-Assad regime, an ally of
Hezbollah and a bitter enemy of Israel, fell in short order amid renewed
offensives by Sunni rebel groups.
But Jerusalem’s apparent stroke of luck would extend
beyond the Middle East. In early 2025, Donald Trump returned to the White
House, replacing a Democratic administration that delayed crucial Israeli
operations in the Gaza Strip, including by holding up weapons shipments.
Without Iranian proxies poised to fire on its northern
border, and the path cleared of Syrian antiaircraft systems (as well as those
taken out in a 2024 Israeli strike on Iran), Israel finally carried out a
concerted bombing campaign against Iran in June 2025. Israel took the Islamic
Republic by surprise, killing dozens of generals and nuclear scientists in the
campaign’s opening act. Israel also damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, and
witnessed its best-case scenario: Trump decided to join the fray, using B-2
bombers and Tomahawk missiles to hit the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear
sites.
Although Trump forced a premature end to the Israeli operation, ties between
the two countries and their militaries grew closer than ever. Netanyahu visited
the U.S. every two months, beaming alongside top administration officials as
they recounted the success of what Trump deemed the 12-Day War. Netanyahu and
Trump huddled to plan the next round, and in February, two of the most capable
air forces in the world unleashed their combined might against a joint enemy.
Netanyahu had been preparing for this moment for his
entire career. The man who raised the alarm about Iran’s nuclear program, sent
his spies to assassinate nuclear scientists, and marched into Congress to openly defy a U.S. president over the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action had his opportunity to destroy the Iranian regime.
Israel wasn’t going it alone, but fighting as an equal partner in a joint
campaign with its most powerful ally.
On February 28, Iran was taken by surprise. Israel killed
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and key security officials in the opening salvo of
the war. As time went on, Israel and the U.S. steadily degraded Iran’s military
capabilities and industry.
Iran didn’t do anything unpredictable. It had been
threatening to strike Arab neighbors for years, and it did so. It closed the
Strait of Hormuz, a contingency for which the U.S. military—especially the
naval officers in Central Command—had been preparing for decades. But there
were some signs that Iran was a tougher nut to crack than expected—protesters
stayed home; the regime continued fighting back coherently; and Iranian leaders
spoke defiantly. It also activated its proxy Hezbollah, which resumed attacks
on Israel in the early days of the war. In Washington, Trump faced pressure
from both world leaders and politicians back home to de-escalate.
On April 8, Trump blinked. He accepted a two-week
ceasefire with Iran before any of his aims were achieved. Israel didn’t expect
it to last long—Iran refused to reopen Hormuz and continued to target
neighboring countries. Moreover, Iran rejected Trump’s terms and offered its
own outlandish demands, including U.S. recognition of its control over Hormuz
and war reparations. Surely Trump wouldn’t tolerate disrespect like that for
long.
There was plenty of hope among Israelis that Trump knew
what he was doing. Maybe he was buying time to allow more U.S. forces to reach
the region. Or perhaps, as he did in the lead-up to both the June and February
campaigns, he was lulling Tehran into a false sense of security. He was issuing
clear threats, and Israelis couldn’t imagine that he would ruin his own
credibility by granting the regime endless extensions.
But that’s exactly what he did. He claimed repeatedly
that a deal was imminent, that the U.S. had won, and that if Iran didn’t sign,
it would face U.S. military might. As time progressed, Trump’s threats went
from unconvincing to farcical.
Then he agreed to a deal that was, in Israel’s eyes,
unthinkable. A successful war forces the enemy to accept the victor’s terms in
exchange for ending the punishment, or at least unilaterally ends with the
mission accomplished. This memorandum of understanding is anything but.
By turning his two-week ceasefire into a 10-week lull,
Trump lost key leverage. Iran is now able to sacrifice nothing while notching
valuable wins. Its only concession is reopening Hormuz, while it gains another
two months of talks—pushing Trump closer to the midterms—and gets billions of
dollars pumped back into its flailing economy. Iran concedes nothing with
regard to its nuclear program, aside from a feeble commitment to engage in
talks about the same issues it was willing to discuss before the war.
The elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile program and
support for regional proxies—both explicit U.S. war aims, according to a still-active page on the White House website—are nowhere in
the deal, and Trump no longer mentions those key issues. Nor does Trump
reference regime change despite promising Iranians that their butchers would
“pay a big price” amid mass anti-government protests in January that saw the
regime’s murder of tens of thousands of civilians.
But perhaps most disturbingly for Israel, the agreement
recognizes and indeed strengthens Iran’s patronage of its proxy Hezbollah in
Lebanon. By conceding to Iran’s demand that the ceasefire cover Lebanon, Trump
put Israel’s military achievements against Hezbollah at risk by shielding the
terrorist group from attack even as it tries to rearm and threaten Israel from
the north. In the process, the deal also undermines the Lebanese government;
Lebanon’s fate is once again in the hands of Tehran, not Beirut.
We’ve already seen this dynamic play out in lethal ways.
After Hezbollah launched four separate drone attacks against Israel earlier
this month, Trump publicly castigated Jerusalem for responding, accepting the
Iranian contention that Israeli attacks on its proxy threaten diplomacy—even
when they’re retaliatory.
“Israel has the right to defend itself against threats,
but the attack it was responding to was very small and meaningless, nobody was
hurt, injured, or killed, and should not disrupt this important process,” Trump
said on June 14, the same day he announced the memorandum
of understanding had been reached. Five days later, a Hezbollah ambush killed four Israeli soldiers in the southern Lebanese
village of Kfar Tebnit.
Iran also stands to gain a major financial windfall with
which it can begin to rearm both its battered proxies and its own military
industry. The deal reportedly includes provisions for a $300 billion investment fund,
partially supported by some of the very countries it attacked during the war.
The very substantive problems with the Iran deal Trump is
pursuing were made even harder to swallow by what seemed in Israeli eyes
gratuitous insults of the country that had just fought so effectively alongside
the U.S. military. At the G7 summit, Trump called Israel “the very small partner” in the relationship.
Vice President J.D. Vance was even cruder, making the absurd argument that
Trump is the only world leader who supports Israel and casting Israel as
incapable of defending itself without U.S. largesse. Vance also mocked Israeli
strategic thinking, helpfully reminding the besieged country that “you can’t just kill
your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”
To make matters worse, the biting jibes at a capable and
loyal U.S. ally came as Trump was praising the rabidly anti-American regime that has killed
hundreds of U.S. servicemen as “very rational … strong people, smart people.”
If the U.S. can no longer prosecute wars in the face of
short-term economic pressures on its citizens, then every American adversary
will take note and calibrate its strategy accordingly. No American ally will
see Washington as a reliable partner in a potential conflict. And with U.S.
enemies emboldened to exert greater control over the global economy’s
chokepoints, Americans might find that they end up paying a much higher price
down the road.
If Trump wants to prioritize the economic well-being of
U.S. voters above America’s and its allies’ security interests, that is his
prerogative. But that should mean either avoiding a war that will lead to a
spike in prices or developing military contingencies for the very predictable
possibility that Iran tries to close Hormuz. Embarking on a high-stakes war,
then calling it off prematurely when Iran does exactly what it threatened to
do, is probably the worst option.
Although the Israeli public and its leaders are
frustrated and shocked by the apparent American capitulation, the U.S.-Israel
relationship is far deeper than ties between heads of state. It rests on
decades of intimate ties between people, militaries, businesses, and
universities. Yet Israelis recognize that this relationship is entering a
challenging period. The Democratic Party has embraced a European-style
left-wing opposition to the Jewish state, while the J.D. Vance wing of the
Republican Party—which is skeptical about the U.S.-Israel alliance at
best—seems ascendant in the Trump White House.
It’s now clear that Israel’s enemies aren’t going
anywhere, either. They will rebuild as Jerusalem’s military options are
limited, while the IDF looks for ways to strike Iran’s proxies without sparking
Trump’s ire. Eventually, U.S. attention will be focused elsewhere, Trump will
move on, and Israel will find new opportunities to improve its security
situation.
In the meantime, Netanyahu—and all of Israel—will slowly
move beyond the shock of Trump’s about-face and start preparing for the wars
that are sure to come.
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