The partnership looked unbreakable. It was, in fact, conditional\u2014and the condition was that their interests never diverge. In June 2026 they diverged completely, and the rupture has exposed a truth Netanyahu has spent his career denying: when Israeli security and the prime minister\u2019s political survival point in opposite directions, he chooses himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The break came over a single document. On June 17, Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran\u2014the Islamabad Memorandum, brokered by Pakistan\u2014formally ending the war he had pushed to start. The 14-point framework in the memorandum declares a permanent halt to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, lifts the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, and waives sanctions on Iran\u2019s oil exports. It also commits the United States and regional partners to assemble a $300 billion reconstruction fund and to negotiate the gradual release of Iran\u2019s frozen assets worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What it does not do is what Israel went to war to achieve. The framework deferred the negotiation over Iran\u2019s nuclear program to a later date, and it says nothing about Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles or its regional proxies. Essentially, Trump wanted a short war that would compel Iran to come to the negotiating table. Netanyahu, on the other hand, wanted Iran permanently broken as a regional power. Those two visions could coexist while the fighting continued, but could not survive peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, Netanyahu set out to wreck it. Israel\u2019s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich branded the agreement bad for Israel and for the free world. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that Trump\u2019s deal \u201cdoes not bind us\u201d and that Israel \u201cis not subject to the United States.\u201d And Israeli jets kept hitting Lebanon. On June 14, with the signing supposedly hours away, Israel struck Beirut. Trump erupted publicly, then telephoned Netanyahu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The call was not diplomatic. In a telephone call by Trump to Netanyahu, he said<\/a>, \u201dBibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon.\u201d In a subsequent call with Netanyahu, there was an even angrier exchange: Trump called the Israeli leader \u201ccrazy,\u201d accused him of ingratitude, and\u2014according to US officials briefed on the call\u2014reminded<\/a> him bluntly: \u201cYou\u2019d be in prison if it weren\u2019t for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That last line is the key to everything. Netanyahu has one political lifeline left: the war. As long as Israel is fighting, there will be no elections; as long as there are no elections, he stays in office, and as long as he stays in office, he can postpone the corruption trials, waiting for the moment he loses power. For Netanyahu, peace is not merely inconvenient\u2014it is politically existential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US intelligence community reportedly warned the White House that Netanyahu was actively working to blow up Trump\u2019s Iran deal, and analysts said plainly that Trump would have to play the middle man against his own ally. The man who lobbied for the war had become the chief obstacle to the peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then came the moment the world was meant to absorb. On June 18, Vice President JD Vance stood at a White House podium and delivered a rebuke unlike any an American administration has aimed at Israel in living memory. \u201cDonald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cIf I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally I have left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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