The recently announced two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran has exposed a fragile dynamic between Washington and Jerusalem, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially threatening to unravel the truce almost immediately. Following the Pakistan-brokered agreement, Netanyahu issued a muted statement of support but insisted it did not apply to Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Defying both Iran and the United States, he ordered some of the most intense airstrikes on Lebanon since the conflict began. In the hours after President Donald Trump announced the truce, Israeli forces bombarded Beirut, striking more than 100 targets in just ten minutes and leaving hundreds dead or wounded. The escalation directly jeopardised the broader US-Iran agreement, prompting Iranian officials to warn that the ceasefire would collapse if attacks on Lebanon continued.
Unwilling to let Israel derail efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump intervened personally, calling Netanyahu and instructing him to “low-key it” in Lebanon. Forced to preserve his relationship with Washington, Netanyahu quickly shifted course and agreed to begin direct negotiations over Hezbollah’s disarmament. The episode laid bare a rarely acknowledged tension: Israel’s pursuit of military escalation colliding with America’s strategic restraint.
That tension is now fuelling a political backlash within Israel. As the country edges towards elections, the realisation that Netanyahu’s maximalist war aims remain unmet has sharpened criticism across the political spectrum. Opposition leader Yair Lapid described the ceasefire as “one of the greatest political disasters in all of our history”, arguing that Israel had been sidelined during the core negotiations. Yair Golan echoed the sentiment, calling the outcome a “total failure” and one of Israel’s most severe strategic setbacks.
Criticism has also come from the right. Avigdor Liberman pointed to the heavy human toll and the persistence of multiple active fronts without a decisive victory. Analysts such as Shira Efron have noted that Netanyahu’s promise to cut off the “head of the snake” in Iran has instead produced a more complex and resilient threat.
Internationally, Netanyahu’s reputation has taken a hit. In the United States, his role in pushing Washington towards confrontation has drawn criticism from both progressives and the MAGA right. On the other side, Senator Mark Warner accused him of acting as the “outsourced leader of American foreign policy”. More broadly, Israel’s global standing has eroded, with growing perceptions of it as a destabilising force in an already volatile region.
The roots of the crisis, according to the New York Times, lie in a meeting on February 11, when Netanyahu personally lobbied Trump in the White House Situation Room. Presenting an ambitious vision for a joint US-Israeli campaign against Iran, he outlined scenarios that included neutralising Tehran’s missile programme, curbing its regional influence and even triggering regime change. At one point, he even showed a video outlining possible successors to Iran’s clerical leadership.
While Trump appeared receptive, senior American officials were deeply sceptical. CIA Director John Ratcliffe dismissed the regime change scenarios as unrealistic, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected them outright. Vice President JD Vance emerged as the most forceful critic, warning that such a war would bring heavy casualties, destabilise the region and alienate Trump’s political base.
Despite these objections, Trump moved ahead—seemingly emboldened by earlier actions such as the killing of Qasem Soleimani—and aligned himself with Netanyahu’s long-standing push for confrontation with Iran. Yet the limits of that alignment have now become clear.
Iran, far from buckling under pressure, has weathered 40 days of conflict and emerged, at least in certain respects, stronger for it. The regime stands. Power has tightened around hardline leadership rather than fracturing, and Tehran sits atop a significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium, enough for multiple nuclear warheads. It also managed to choke global energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, compelling Washington to return to the negotiating table.
That pressure seems to have reordered American priorities. While Israel remains fixed on dismantling Iran's nuclear programme and grinding down Hezbollah, the Trump administration has begun looking elsewhere. What it wants now appears less like transformation and more like transaction: calm in the Strait, behavioural concessions from Tehran, a restoration of something resembling stability. Regime change, if it was ever truly on the table, is no longer the destination. While Washington is recalibrating carefully, Jerusalem holds firm to a maximalist logic that increasingly has no partner in the White House.
The consequences are already visible. Israel finds itself diplomatically sidelined, excluded from ongoing negotiations in Islamabad and increasingly isolated on the global stage. Netanyahu’s leverage in Washington has diminished, leaving him to navigate a delicate balance between satisfying his domestic political base and maintaining the support of Trump, still his most critical ally.
For Netanyahu, the risks are both immediate and long-term. Domestically, he faces an electorate increasingly sceptical of a war that has delivered neither decisive victory nor lasting security. Internationally, he must contend with a shifting U.S. posture that prioritises stability over escalation.
With no durable resolution to the Iranian nuclear question, the risk of renewed conflict looms. For Israel, the prospect of confronting a rearmed and emboldened Iran in the coming years is no longer hypothetical—it is fast becoming a strategic inevitability.