{"id":500078,"date":"2026-06-19T01:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/500078\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T01:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:46:09","slug":"israel-stunned-by-trumps-iran-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/500078\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Stunned by Trump\u2019s Iran Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump\u2019s preliminary agreement<\/a> to end the war with Iran.<\/p>\n

It accomplishes none of Israel\u2019s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.<\/p>\n

Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line<\/a> and emboldened<\/a>, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. The deal\u2019s requirement that American forces retreat from the \u201cproximity\u201d of Iran within 30 days means that Iran can boast that it has chased the U.S. military out of the region.<\/p>\n

Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran\u2019s missile arsenal or its support of Israel\u2019s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.<\/p>\n

Worse still for Israel, by constraining its military in Lebanon<\/a> \u2014 indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country \u2014 the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war.<\/p>\n

The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran may receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran\u2019s militia allies around the Middle East.<\/p>\n

And Iran\u2019s nuclear program? The existential threat to Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried to eliminate throughout his career, and which was Mr. Trump\u2019s primary reason for joining the wars on Iran, was left for a later stage of U.S.-Iran negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bad agreement in which the Americans are paying with cash, and got, at the maximum, a letter of intent,\u201d Yaakov Amidror, a hawkish former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said in an interview.<\/p>\n

David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, called it \u201ca catastrophic capitulation,\u201d in the headline of a fiery opinion column.<\/p>\n

And Nir Dvori, an analyst for Israel\u2019s Channel 12 News, likened the deal to a \u201cdiplomatic Oct. 7<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a cataclysmic disaster for which Israel was wholly unprepared.<\/p>\n

Mr. Netanyahu addressed the U.S.-Iran agreement only briefly on Thursday, saying \u201cadditional challenges lie ahead of us,\u201d requiring \u201ccalmness, a firm stance on our security interests, and at the same time, maintaining the important connection with our American friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prime minister said Israel would stick to its ultimate goal: \u201cIran will not have nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also vowed that Israel would restore security in the north, near its border with Lebanon. \u201cThat requires maintaining the security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we not withdraw from it as long as Israel\u2019s security needs demand it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, it was left to minor ministers and backbench lawmakers to try put the best possible face on the agreement.<\/p>\n

Amichai Chikli, the diaspora affairs minister, speculated in a radio interview that Mr. Netanyahu would know how to say no to Mr. Trump about pulling out of Lebanon just as he knew how \u201cto bring the United States into this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others more soberly grappled with the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s triumphalist rhetoric from early in the war had proved fantastical. He had repeatedly and confidently assured Israelis that the country and its alliance with the United States were \u201cchanging the face of the Middle East\u201d to Israel\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are remaking the region,\u201d Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran came out stronger, and I believe is now the regional hegemon,\u201d he added. \u201cThey stood up to the U.S., the global superpower. They can have missiles, and there\u2019s nothing in the agreement about the nuclear issue except we\u2019ll talk about it. This is an Iranian victory over the U.S. and Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as they reeled from the terms of the agreement, Israelis across the political spectrum seemed also to be reckoning with Mr. Trump, the nature of his support for Israel, and the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu has tied Israel\u2019s fortunes to the American leader\u2019s good will.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday at the Group of 7 summit in France, the president had again spoken of Mr. Netanyahu with disdain, suggesting he was excitable and prone to overreacting to Hezbollah\u2019s attacks. He belittled him publicly as the \u201cvery small partner\u201d in the relationship and said that Israel would have been annihilated if it had not been for him.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump suggested that Syria could do a better job than Israel of cracking down on Hezbollah in Lebanon without killing as many civilians. And he minimized the ballistic-missile threat from Iran \u2014 which forced millions of Israelis to run in and out of shelters throughout the war. He said it was only fair for Iran to have missiles because other countries in the region did as well.<\/p>\n

The reactions in Israel evoked a bad divorce.<\/p>\n

Hanoch Milwidsky, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party, posted a video<\/a> on social media of himself removing a red MAGA hat and replacing it with a blue one with the Hebrew words for \u201ctotal victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist at Yediot Ahronot, Israel\u2019s largest newspaper, wrote<\/a> that Mr. Netanyahu had led Israel into \u201cthe most severe collapse in its history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump reneged on every promise, turned Iran into a power, strengthened Hezbollah, and as a final flourish, gave Israel a kick and humiliation,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-born Israeli pollster, said it was \u201cslowly sinking in\u201d for Israelis that Mr. Netanyahu had staked the entire U.S.-Israeli relationship on his personal bond with a president prone to \u201ctemper tantrums\u201d over \u201csimple slights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he was hoping that he could employ the tools that he has always employed with American presidents,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know, tread carefully and strategically, but push the boundaries, and try to run circles around them if you can,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that with a bit of a back-and-forth dance, it was largely working for him with Trump,\u201d she said. \u201cBut he hit his limit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[192869,76676,86,85,87,46,88,2897,43,627],"class_list":["post-500078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin","tag-donald-j","tag-hezbollah","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-netanyahu","tag-news","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}