By Peter Beaumont
While Iran and the US agree to a fragile ceasefire, Israel's conflict has resulted in a failure and, according to opponents, a "political disaster."
In a war where there have been no winners, Israel's prime minister looks set to be the biggest loser as he enters a fragile and uncertain ceasefire with Iran.
After years of Benjamin Netanyahu's threats against Iran, his spectacles at the UN General Assembly, suspicious files constantly waved before the eyes of the world media, and diplomatic pressure on successive American presidents to agree to a war against Iran, Israel's conflict has proven a failure.
The American intelligence community's assessment that Israeli predictions of regime change and revolution in Iran were "ridiculous" turned out to be correct. The Israeli assessment that the war would last at best a few days, at worst a few weeks, turned out to be extremely far from reality.
Just two days ago, according to Israel's Channel 12, Netanyahu was pushing Donald Trump not to accept a ceasefire. For a day, the US president issued devastating warnings to Tehran and then backed down, reportedly leaving Israel out of the decision-making process.
"There has never been a political catastrophe like this in our entire history. Israel was not even close to the table when decisions were made about the core of our national security," wrote the main Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, in X.
“The military did everything it was asked to do and the public showed extraordinary resilience, but Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and achieved none of the objectives he set himself. It will take years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu caused through arrogance, negligence, and lack of strategic planning.”
Even the leader of the left-wing Democrats party, Yair Golan, called the ceasefire a "strategic failure" by Netanyahu.
“He promised a historic victory and security for generations, but in practice we got one of the most serious strategic failures Israel has ever known,” Golan said in X. “It is a total failure that endangers Israel’s security for years to come.”
The reality is that Netanyahu put everything on the line in this war, and by failing to secure the overthrow of the theocratic regime, the seizure of Tehran's highly enriched uranium reserves, or a real weakening of the Iranian state, Israel's global standing – already severely damaged by its actions in Gaza, where it has been accused of genocide – has been further damaged.
On the security front, despite Trump's claims, the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been strengthened, as Tehran has – at least for the moment – achieved its main objective: surviving a month-long offensive by two of the world's greatest military powers.
The attacks have left a wounded but still intact regime with significant military assets, which is likely to pursue rapid rearmament as it seeks opportunities to retaliate.
Netanyahu's insistence on continuing attacks in southern Lebanon also seems arrogant, given that Israel's stated intention to create a new security zone puts the Israeli military in direct conflict on the ground with Hezbollah fighters, who have historically shown themselves to be very capable of fighting on their own territory.
In this context, Israel's massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon, carried out without warning, appears to be a punitive act of displacement, since the targets in Iran were not achieved.
The public opinion and diplomatic consequences are expected to be even more serious for Netanyahu and Israel. In the US, in particular, a political consensus dating back to the 1960s is clearly collapsing. Israel’s role in pushing Trump toward war with Iran has been criticized by both progressives and the hard right of the Maga movement, while support for Israel in general has fallen to historic lows, even among Jewish voters.
Then there are the domestic consequences for Netanyahu in an election year in Israel. Far from transforming Israel's security situation, he will emerge from the war without achieving any of the key objectives he promised.
Despite Netanyahu’s well-documented cynicism in routinely proclaiming temporary achievements, it will be clear to Israelis that, far from eliminating what he has long described as an “existential” threat, conditions remain largely unchanged.
Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, may be dead, but his more radical son has replaced him. Rather than closing the chapter on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran's 10-point plan — which Trump said was an acceptable basis for negotiations — appears to include accepting Iran's right to enrich uranium, although Trump denied that was part of the deal.
At least for now, the terms of the US-Iran talks point to something closer to the framework of Barack Obama's international nuclear deal – which Netanyahu tried so hard to sabotage and from which Trump withdrew – than to a new reality.
For some, like Haaretz military affairs correspondent Amos Harel, failure was a foregone conclusion in Netanyahu's war plans.
“Many of the common weaknesses of the current American administration and the Israeli system under Netanyahu came to the fore: a tendency to gamble on unfounded desires, shallow and immature plans, disregard for experts, and aggressive use of pressure to force them to adapt their views to the wishes of the political leadership,” Harel said.
It will be clear even to the Israelis that last month's conflict was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wage a campaign of this magnitude with full American support. There may be further flare-ups of tension, but the likelihood of such sustained hostilities recurring seems slim.
Trump backed down at the moment of the most dangerous escalation, including the issue of sending ground troops, an extremely unpopular move in the US due to the huge cost and severe damage it would cause to the global economy.
It will not have escaped anyone's attention that, having secured the war he had long sought – and having seen it fail – Netanyahu is unlikely to get a second chance with US support.
Given that this has been a staple of the Israeli prime minister's political rhetoric for years, one might ask: what does he mean now?
“It is now the fourth time in a row – in Gaza, once in Lebanon and twice in Iran – that his boasts of total victory and elimination of existential threats have been exposed as empty promises,” Harel wrote.
