In my last column, I argued that the reported Trump-Netanyahu blowup mattered less than the strategic realities beneath it. The United States and Israel had similar but not identical interests. Washington was trying to prevent a wider regional conflict that could threaten energy markets and complicate broader strategic priorities. Israel was trying to restore deterrence after October 7 and press its advantage against Iran and its proxies while the opportunity remained. The difference was largely one of emphasis and timing rather than ultimate direction.
Two weeks later, speculation about a rupture in the alliance continues and criticism of Netanyahu has intensified. The emerging narrative is that he overplayed his hand, Trump finally pushed back, Iran survived, and Israel now finds itself in a worse strategic position than before the war. That narrative is neat, dramatic, and popular among armchair pundits. It is also almost certainly wrong. More importantly, it is wrong regardless of what the MOU says, whether any official agreement emerges beyond it, or whether Iran honors any commitments whatsoever.
The most revealing reality may be Lebanon. Iran has spent weeks trying to link any deal with the US to Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon (and Hezbollah’s resurrection). Iranian statements, echoed by Pakistan and others, continue to press that aim. Washington has denied the linkage, and Jerusalem has not only rejected it but also demonstrated its willingness to endure significant friction with Washington to preserve existing security buffers.
Hezbollah’s renewed rocket fire during a period of active US-Iran diplomacy was part of a manipulative scheme almost certainly orchestrated by Iran: Israel would either retaliate more forcefully, potentially dragging the US back toward a regional war it desires to avoid, or the US would restrain Israel and force linkage of a deal to Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. The first could have trapped Trump in an unwanted war and destabilized regional energy markets. The second would have enabled Hezbollah to rebuild and undermined Israeli deterrence.
But that strategy has thus far failed. Whatever agreement may or may not emerge between the US and Iran, and whatever Iran may or may not honor, Israel has not accepted a return to the pre-October 7 reality in Lebanon or elsewhere. Nor has the US forced it to do so. Israel remains committed to preventing Hezbollah’s return to southern Lebanon absent reliable security guarantees, including meaningful Lebanese control and removal of Hezbollah south of the Litani River. Nor is Lebanon the only front on which Israel’s strategic position has improved. Israel now maintains substantial security buffers in both Gaza and Syria, with no indication of retrenchment while significant threats remain. These facts alone make any claim of Israeli defeat harder to sustain.
The deeper mistake in much of the current commentary is that it measures the war against idealized aspirations. If the test is whether Iran’s regime collapsed, Hezbollah disappeared, Hamas ceased to exist, the highly enriched uranium was immediately secured or destroyed, then yes, the war fell short. But those were never realistic war aims. The relevant question is whether Israel and the US accomplished major strategic aims relative to the status quo ante.
The United States did not enter this conflict to invade Iran, occupy Iran, or pursue another nation-building project in the Middle East. It attacked Iran because diplomacy to stop Iran’s march to the bomb failed. Once diplomacy failed, Trump had to make good on his threats or suffer a far greater blow to US deterrence. So the US hit Iran hard, degraded much of its strategic capabilities, proved that its warnings were not empty, and then sought to exit before the conflict expanded into the kind of regional war Tehran and its allies seem to have wanted.
Trump’s responsibility was to advance American interests and help an ally, not solve all of its strategic problems. If he concluded that the US had inflicted enough damage to prevent an immediate nuclear breakout while avoiding a larger war, that was not abandoning Israel. It was superpower management.
Netanyahu faced a different reality. An American president can ask whether enough has been done to justify disengagement. Israel needed to ask whether a rare chance to further degrade a genocidal enemy should be pursued. That difference explains much of the present friction.
This brings the analysis back to October 7. Israel did not seek the multi-theater, regional war that followed the October 7 slaughter. October 7 did more than traumatize Israel. It shattered core assumptions of Israeli security policy: that Hamas could be managed, Hezbollah contained, and Iranian encroachment countered without disrupting the regional status quo or requiring major military operations. October 7 exposed the catastrophic limits of a doctrine that prioritized management of threats over their systematic degradation.
Israel was therefore forced not merely to defend itself, but to reconstruct its deterrence. In this most important objective, it has clearly succeeded. The new deterrence doctrine is wholly unapologetic: hostile forces will not be permitted to entrench on Israel’s borders or mature into strategic threats; Hezbollah will not be allowed to rebuild unchecked in Lebanon; Iran’s nuclear program and proxy network will remain subject to military strikes as much as necessary; and Israel will preserve freedom of action throughout the region to enforce those principles.
Just as important, Israel has restored a measure of fear that its enemies had lost. On October 6, Israel’s adversaries could believe that Israel was distracted, divided, and more risk-averse. The war since then has conveyed a very different message to Israel’s enemies. Those who attack Israel will pay extraordinary costs. The elimination of terrorist leaders, commanders, and other senior figures, together with repeated strikes on their power centers, has sent an unmistakable signal: geography, title, secrecy, and distance no longer guarantee safety from Israel’s reach.
That lesson must now be studied not only in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, but throughout the Middle East. Enemies now know that post-October 7 Israel is willing to strike leadership, infrastructure, command networks, weapons programs, nuclear facilities and proxies in multiple theaters anywhere in the region. That does not eliminate the threats. However, the proper comparison is not between reality and total victory. It is between October 6 and now.
On October 6, Israel faced a stronger Hamas, a stronger Hezbollah, a stronger Iran, a far more advanced Iranian nuclear program, less operational freedom, and a deterrence doctrine that was about to suffer one of the greatest failures in Israeli history. Measured against those realities, Israel’s position is plainly stronger today than it was before the war. Today, Israel faces a weaker Hamas, a weaker Hezbollah, and a weaker Iran; it enjoys greater operational freedom throughout the region; and Iran failed to manipulate diplomacy to restore Hezbollah. Most importantly, Israel has emerged with a new security doctrine: hostile forces will not be permitted to mature on its borders while Israel relies upon assumed deterrence.
The war’s most enduring consequence for Israel is therefore likely not found in any MOU that is signed, any formal agreement that may or may not emerge, or any commitment that Iran keeps or does not keep. It is the reconstruction of Israeli deterrence after its catastrophic collapse and the emergence of a doctrine designed to ensure that October 7 is not repeated.
Nor is there a compelling case that the US lost. Washington did not need regime change or the total destruction of Iran’s war-making capacity to claim a strategic success. Its objectives were more limited: prevent an imminent Iranian nuclear breakout, demonstrate that American warnings were not empty, support a key ally, and avoid a broader regional war. By those measures, the United States has largely succeeded. Whether America’s longer-term deterrence posture has been strengthened or weakened remains an open question. War is inherently unpredictable. Yet it is difficult to call the US action a failure: the world’s most powerful military entered on its own terms, inflicted substantial damage on a dangerous adversary, and thus far avoided becoming trapped in a prolonged war Tehran seems to have hoped to provoke.
To borrow from Mark Twain, reports of Israeli or American defeat are greatly exaggerated.
Isaac Winer is a Palo Alto-based attorney in private practice with a strong academic background in international relations from Stanford and a law degree from UCLA. He writes on Israel, geopolitics, and modern conflict, combining analytical rigor, strategic insight, and decades of pro-Israel advocacy and Jewish communal involvement.