![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/213193.jpeg\")
An aerial photo of the Fordow complex taken after it was bombed by US aircraft.<\/p>\nThe electronic ink was barely dry, and Israel already knew what it thought about the emerging agreement. “Bad deal,” read the main headline of Yediot Aharonot on 14 June, in two blunt Hebrew words that captured the national mood with the economy of a tombstone inscription.<\/p>\n
There is a reason for Israel\u2019s anger. Though the parameters of the deal had not yet been revealed at the time, it was already clear that the US was making material concessions, while Iran made vague promises. The Strait of Hormuz reopens. The US naval blockade lifts. Iran gets significant economic relief, including billions in frozen assets released. But on the three questions that actually keep Israeli strategists awake at night, the deal defers, hedges, and promises a follow-on conversation that only fools would count on.<\/p>\n
The Memorandum of Understanding is a very \u201cTrumpian\u201d one: a deal that starts with a \u201clight\u201d first phase, and defers everything else to a second phase that will likely never come. For Israel, which fought alongside the United States to degrade and even collapse the Islamic Republic, expecting to see that degradation locked into a durable settlement, this is a clear setback.<\/p>\n
The architecture of the MOU reveals a profound imbalance: the United States is front-loading every concession it has to offer in exchange for commitments that are either already degraded by the war or contractually deferred to a second negotiation that may never arrive.<\/p>\n
This is what Israeli officials mean when they say the deal is structured in Tehran’s favour. Israel’s red lines have always been explicit: no enriched uranium remaining on Iranian soil, no intact enrichment infrastructure, limitations on ballistic missiles, and a severing of the financial arteries feeding Hezbollah, the Houthis, and what remains of Hamas. Netanyahu stated all four publicly as recently as February 2026, when he told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations: “There should be no enrichment capability\u2014not stopping the enrichment process, but dismantling the equipment and the infrastructure that allows you to enrich in the first place.”<\/p>\n
An aerial photo of the Fordow complex taken after it was bombed by US aircraft.<\/p>\n
Not only does the agreement not deliver on those promises, it in fact mostly ignores them. The nuclear issue, which is the only issue mentioned by name in the draft, is deferred to a \u201cfinal agreement\u201d to be reached within \u201cphase 1\u201d (60 days or more if the parties agree) of the Memorandum. In the meantime, the agreement highlights Iran\u2019s pledge to never acquire nuclear weapons and to maintain the status quo.<\/p>\n
Because this is a temporary deal, even this \u201cstatus quo\u201d is ill-defined: Who will ensure that Iran indeed maintains this nuclear pause? What is the exact nature of this status quo to begin with? What happens if Iran breaches this commitment? A vague and non-enforceable deal isn\u2019t exactly a recipe for success. This would all be fine if the MOU was realistically a ramp towards a \u201cfinal agreement\u201d, as it is supposed to be. But these temporary agreements have a way of overstaying their welcome.<\/p>\n
And this is the part that is addressed. Everything else\u2014the proxies, the missiles\u2014is not even being politely deferred to a \u201csecond phase\u201d that will likely never arrive. It is simply off the table. What is on the table is a US withdrawal from the \u201csurrounding areas\u201d along with the lifting of the US blockade.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the memorandum pledges US waivers for Iranian crude exports and the release of frozen or restricted funds. The exact sums remain unclear, and the agreement hints at some conditionality: funds would be released only if \u201cprogress\u201d is made toward a final deal. But the basic structure is clear: material concessions are being offered up front in exchange for vague, immaterial \u201cprogress\u201d toward an agreement that does not even cover all the issues of concern to Israel.<\/p>\n
![\"@Scavino47](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/213189.jpeg\")
US President Donald Trump signs a deal to end the US-Iran war inside Ch\u00e2teau Versailles, in Versailles, southwest of Paris, on 17 June 2026.<\/p>\n
Strategic impatience<\/p>\n
What underpins this imbalance goes beyond the text of the MOU: where Iran has shown strategic patience, Trump has shown the opposite\u2014strategic impatience. In his own Art of the Deal words, \u201cThe worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.\u201d In Israel\u2019s view, Trump has lost his leverage by increasingly bowing to Iranian pressure, and showing that he would cave first.<\/p>\n
Of course, this is an oversimplification. Once the war shifted from a high-intensity bombing campaign to a war of attrition, pitting an American blockade against an Iranian one, geography became destiny. Any more serious strategic planner\u2014or simply anyone who had paid attention to earlier scenario exercises\u2014could have seen the trajectory: if the opening phase, conceived as a swift and overwhelming blow to decapitate the Islamic Republic, failed, the conflict would inevitably become a contest of wills with Hormuz at its centre.<\/p>\n
Yet Washington appears not to have seriously gamed out that possibility, and Israel likely had little incentive to force the issue. Trump wanted a \u201cVenezuela-style\u201d hit-and-run operation, and Israel was content to encourage that illusion. Once the illusion collapsed, the choices were stark: escalate by committing to a ground intervention that would have turned a would-be blitzkrieg into a \u201cforever war\u201d; settle in for a brutal test of pain tolerance\u2014a dangerous game against a regime willing to absorb enormous losses among its own population; or walk away with whatever could still be salvaged.<\/p>\n
That Trump picked the latter option is unsurprising, and yet also consequential. The Islamabad MOU makes it difficult for any administration to negotiate a \u201cgood\u201d final agreement. But for an administration that just showed strategic impatience, this task is near impossible.<\/p>\n
The threat of force also lost its edge. Though Iran is battered, it views survival as victory, and will be less coerced by the threat of renewed military action. With military threats losing their edge, economic sanctions fading, and Trump likely to move on, the \u201cfinal agreement\u201d is unlikely to be a good one for Israel.<\/p>\n
In other words, the \u201cbad (but temporary) deal\u201d is likely to either turn into an \u201ceven worse (long-lasting) deal\u201d, or no deal at all. There is no doubt as to which of those options Netanyahu prefers. While the MOU closes another round of violence, it is likely to be viewed by Israel (and by most of the new leadership in Iran itself) as a pause rather than an end.<\/p>\n
![\"IRANIAN](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/213190.jpeg\")
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signs a memorandum of understanding in Tehran on 18 June 2026 to end the US-Iran war.<\/p>\n
The deal is bad, but the broader strategic picture isn\u2019t. Israel and the US can now operate within Iran at will. Tehran has seen one of its key proxies (Hezbollah) battered to the point of reversing the equation and having to come to Hezbollah\u2019s rescue. Months ago, an Iranian crackdown on anti-government protesters reportedly killed thousands. Iranians haven\u2019t forgotten.<\/p>\n
The Islamic Republic may be getting a lifeline, but its economy will need far more than that to recover. Corruption and greed will also ensure the average Iranian doesn\u2019t benefit, as an increasingly powerful IRGC continues to cement its hold on the country\u2019s flailing economy. Inequalities between a clique of apparatchiks and those on the outside will continue to grow in an unsustainable way without a reset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The electronic ink was barely dry, and Israel already knew what it thought about the emerging agreement. “Bad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-500897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500897","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=500897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}