Israel went to war with Iran, but Netanyahu may be the loser
The headline strapped across the front page of the Israeli news site Haaretz on Tuesday summed up the feelings of many: “The Iran Fiasco Is
The headline strapped across the front page of the Israeli news site Haaretz on Tuesday summed up the feelings of many: “The Iran Fiasco Is Netanyahu’s Biggest Failure Since October 7”. After three and a half months of a stuttering war with Iran, Israel’s foremost ally, the United States, has brokered an interim agreement without, it appears, any input from Israel. Instead, the Iranian state, which Israel’s politicians have for decades cast as an existential threat, is still standing, and, through its control over the Strait of Hormuz, arguably more powerful than before. Closer to home, Israel’s ability to continue its military operations in Lebanon, which it claimed was necessary to protect against rocket fire from the Iran-allied Lebanese group Hezbollah, must now be weighed against its potential to cause problems between the US and Iran ahead of the agreement’s signing, expected later this week. Mass opposition Opposition to the deal in Israel has come from both the centre and the far right. Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist who is one of the favourites to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in elections later this year, was unsparing in his criticism of the Israeli leader and the US-Iran deal. Eisenkot blasted what he described as “the dismal outcome of a failed government”, pointing to what he characterised as the “vast gulf” between Netanyahu’s “empty promises of total victory” and the outline of what the agreement between the US and Iran will stipulate. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government – namely, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – have been typically uncompromising, with a possible eye on the elections. “We must not act according to the agreements between Trump and [Mojtaba] Khamenei,” Ben-Gvir said in reference to the US and Israeli leaders, while Smotrich called it a “bad deal”.
Netanyahu, having spent years pushing for a war with Iran and popularising it in Israel, knows that ending the conflict is unpopular domestically. The prime minister has gone to considerable pains to put as much distance between himself and what he called “Trump’s decision” to end the war while simultaneously claiming to have been an equal partner with the US in waging it. Shrugging off what critics claimed was Israel’s calamitous position ahead of the agreement’s signing later this week, Netanyahu instead claimed success, telling a press conference on Monday: “We removed, for years to come, this danger hanging over us of the elimination of Israel’s population,” he said. “That is what we did. We saved the State of Israel from annihilation,” he continued, offering an uncannily accurate echo of his claims after the June 2025 12-day war with Iran, when he said that he had secured Israel a “historic victory” over Iran that would “abide for generations”. “It is not playing well, and the claims are not credible,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera. “The assumption was that if you pull America into a war, then it is a given that Iran will be crushed and that things Israel cannot achieve in terms of regime destruction and Iranian capitulation can be achieved by America,” he said, noting that this has not been the case. Levy continued, pointing to how Israeli expectations of how the war might play out were shaped by the country’s own view of itself within the region. “The assumption itself is infused with colonial racism and Israeli hubris,” he said. “The notion that Iran could possibly outsmart, out-strategise, and gain leverage was not on the agenda.” Iran on top?
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