Has Netanyahu Destroyed the U.S.-Israel Alliance? Netanyahu talked Trump into a war on Iran. The world paid the price.

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/2026/06/23/has-netanyahu-destroyed-us-israel-alliance/


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a news conference in Jerusalem, June 15, 2026. Credit: Ronen Zvulun, Pool Photo via AP

Donald Trump’s Iran deal—or perhaps we should say “capitulation”—is a fiasco for the United States and Trump’s presidency, but it is widely viewed as a catastrophe for Israel. The more Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu tries to undermine the deal by mounting attacks on southern Lebanon, the more he enrages Trump, who keeps pointing out that the U.S. is Israel’s only ally in the world. Israel is now more isolated than ever. Israel was deliberately excluded from negotiations with Iran, because Israel was known to oppose any deal that would shorten the war. Nonetheless, in the deal the U.S. bound Israel to cease attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Recent polls conducted in Israel show that some 92 percent of Israelis believe that Iran won the war. Comparable majorities say Netanyahu’s launching of the war was a calamitous mistake and achieved none of its objectives. Another poll, by Israel’s Channel 12, shows that just 13 percent of Israelis now trust the once-popular Trump to safeguard Israeli interests. Netanyahu contended that the war would topple the Iranian regime, end its support for Hezbollah, wipe out Iran’s long-range missiles, eliminate its nuclear threat, and leave Israel more influential in the region and more secure. Instead, the war left the Iranian regime stronger than ever, and the settlement allowed Iran to keep its ballistic missiles, plus $300 billion in reconstruction funding. Iran gets to keep financing Hezbollah, while Israel is not supposed to attack them.

The Financial Times quotes Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, referring to Trump and Netanyahu: “Both of them were high on their own supply, misjudged what they could achieve … and squandered the most favourable strategic position.” The deal also creates something that all Israeli leaders have hitherto worked assiduously to avoid: serious “daylight” between Washington and Jerusalem. While Netanyahu’s freelancing has enraged Trump and JD Vance, collateral damage from Netanyahu’s brutal actions in Gaza and the West Bank has increasingly alienated U.S. public opinion. AIPAC and affiliated political action committees have gone from the interest group that elected officials dare not cross to being so unpopular that, as my colleague David Dayen recently reported, they have been systematically hiding much of their political spending.

What’s not clear is how all this will affect Netanyahu’s chances to stay in office in this fall’s elections, and hence delay yet further a looming corruption trial that has been hanging over his head for years, or the long-term U.S.-Israel relationship once Trump and Netanyahu are gone. Israelis of all political stripes, including supporters and opponents of Netanyahu, as well as supporters and opponents of a two-state solution to Palestine, view the war and the terms of its settlement as a disaster. Polls have consistently shown that Netanyahu is likely to lose this fall’s election, but his opposition is divided. Virtually all Israeli politicians, like the broad Israeli public, are uneasy about the turn of events in Iran and mistrusting of Trump. The joint Trump-Netanyahu misadventure and miscalculation in Iran leaves Israel further away from regional security.

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[hlthe2b]

1. I always thought Bibi was intelligent--maybe too much so. But, that he did not see what Trump

IS and how deranged and dangerous he could be--what enlisting him would do to Israel's standing throughout the world... Well, many a corrupt-as-hell man has been blinded by greed, ambition, and desire for power, so I presume that shows the situation for what it is and always has been.

What ultimately happens to the "unique" Israel-US alliance going forward probably depends on if Bibi is defeated in October and certainly whether Trump remains uncontained in any way. I think 2 1/2 more years on the trajectory we are now will destroy that alliance. It would be hard to argue otherwise.