The illusion of total victory has vanished. In Jerusalem, the political mood is grim as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an electorate that feels profoundly misled. The immediate trigger for this domestic backlash is a newly brokered interim agreement between the United States and Iran—a diplomatic arrangement that leaves Tehran’s regional influence and core nuclear architecture intact while promising the phased unfreezing of billions of dollars in assets. For a leader who staked his entire four-decade career on being the ultimate bulwark against the Islamic Republic, the deal represents a devastating strategic failure.
With a general election looming this autumn, Netanyahu’s long-standing reputation as "King Bibi," the master political survivor, is under its most severe strain yet. The public anger currently boiling over in Israel is not just about the terms of the American-led ceasefire. It is rooted in a deeper realization that Israel’s security establishment overpromised, misjudged its most vital ally, and left the country more isolated than at any point in its modern history.
The Arrogance of Operation Roaring Lion
When the joint military campaign against Iran commenced in February under the grand banner of Operation Roaring Lion—complemented by Washington’s Operation Epic Fury—the rhetoric out of Jerusalem promised nothing less than a historic reset. Netanyahu explicitly told the Israeli public that the campaign would dismantle the Iranian nuclear threat, neutralize its ballistic capabilities, and trigger the collapse of the clerical regime in Tehran.
The strategy relied entirely on a specific gamble. Netanyahu assumed that by drawing Donald Trump into a direct military confrontation with Iran, the United States would finish the job that Israel could not execute alone. He bet that the octogenarian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death would create a power vacuum that a coordinated air campaign and targeted assassinations could exploit, forcing a total collapse of the state machinery.
The gamble failed on every count.
- Regime continuity: The assassination of Khamenei did not trigger a pro-Western revolution. Instead, the transition of power to a younger, more nationalistic military elite solidified under Mojtaba Khamenei, maintaining absolute control over the country's security and intelligence apparatus.
- Persistent capabilities: While Iranian infrastructure suffered notable damage from months of airstrikes, its subterranean uranium enrichment facilities and decentralized drone production networks remained largely operational.
- Economic lifeline: The interim deal directly reverses the maximum-pressure strategy, offering Tehran billions of dollars in sanctions relief and the reopening of vital oil corridors through the Strait of Hormuz.
The reality on the ground is stark. Israel spent significant strategic capital, yet the fundamental threats along its borders remain unmanaged. Hamas continues to hold territory in parts of Gaza, and Israeli troops remain locked in a costly, open-ended war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The Trump Miscalculation
For years, Netanyahu cultivated an image as the only Israeli politician who truly understood how to manipulate the gears of American power. He bypassed democratic administrations, delivered partisan addresses to the United States Congress, and flattered Donald Trump with uncritical praise. That personal diplomacy has now yielded a bitter harvest.
Netanyahu misjudged the American president's true priorities. Trump’s political brand relies heavily on a promise to wind down expensive, protracted foreign engagements before they exact a heavy political toll at home. As the war dragging into late spring became increasingly unpopular with the American electorate, Washington shifted rapidly toward an exit strategy.
According to regional intelligence sources, the White House grew intensely frustrated with uncoordinated Israeli strikes in Beirut, viewing them as deliberate attempts by Netanyahu to scuttle peace talks and prolong the conflict for his own domestic political survival. When the breaking point arrived, Washington locked Jerusalem out of the room. Israel was not only excluded from the negotiations with Tehran; its intelligence agencies were forced to rely on third-party regional partners just to get updates on what the Americans were conceding.
The ultimate terms of the agreement showcase just how thoroughly Israel's interests were sidelined. Trump prioritized the stabilization of global energy markets and the reopening of shipping lanes over Israel’s insistence on the complete dismantling of Iran's enrichment centrifuges. Furthermore, Washington’s push for a cessation of hostilities has effectively forced Netanyahu to scale back military objectives in Lebanon—a move that deeply angers the hawkish, ultranationalist factions within his own governing coalition.
The Domestic Reckoning
Netanyahu’s current political vulnerability is uniquely severe because he has nowhere left to hide. In past crises, he could deflect blame onto the military command, the intelligence services, or left-wing political rivals. But the war against Iran was entirely his project, executed on his timeline and according to his doctrine.
In a defensive press conference, Netanyahu insisted that he stood firm against international pressure and prevented even worse concessions, such as an forced withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Yet the public response has been uniformly hostile across the political spectrum. Center-left challengers like Yair Lapid and Yair Golan have labeled the outcome one of the most catastrophic foreign policy failures in the state's history, while right-wing coalition partners like Itamar Ben-Gvir openly attack the prime minister for weakness.
The core problem for Netanyahu is that the public no longer buys the narrative of imminent victory. The country is exhausted by multi-front attrition, an unaddressed hostage crisis dating back to October 2023, and an economy buckled by mass mobilization. Current domestic polling shows Likud and its right-wing allies falling at least eleven seats short of the 61-seat majority required to form a government.
A Shattered Doctrine
For nearly two decades, Netanyahu’s grand strategy rested on three pillars: managing the Palestinian issue through economic containment rather than political resolution, building a regional anti-Iran alliance with Sunni Arab states, and maintaining absolute bipartisan support in the United States.
Every single one of those pillars has collapsed.
The regional normalization agreements, once touted as a masterstroke that sidelined the Palestinian cause, are frozen. The Arab Gulf states, sensing Washington's shifting priorities and unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of a destructive regional war, chose diplomacy and de-escalation with Tehran over Netanyahu’s vision of a military alliance. Most critically, by turning Israel’s security needs into a hyper-partisan wedge issue in American politics, Netanyahu damaged the decades-old consensus that guaranteed unconditional American backing.
Israel now finds itself facing an emboldened adversary in Iran, a deeply frustrated superpower ally in Washington, and a fractured domestic public that has lost faith in its leadership's strategic judgment. Netanyahu has spent his entire political life proving his detractors wrong by engineering improbable escapes from the brink of defeat. This time, however, the trap he is caught in is one of his own design. He cannot campaign on security when his signature security initiative has just left Israel more vulnerable, and he cannot claim to be the indispensable diplomat when the White House refuses to take his calls.
