The Iran War’s Biggest Loser? Definitely Netanyahu 

Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran has been a strategic failure. Assassinating the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and elevating his son Mojtaba did not produce regime change but, as described in a recent New York Times report, a “military junta dominated by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” with “a younger, more brazen generation in power.” That brazenness paid off for Iran when it seized the Strait of Hormuz, slashing Washington’s negotiating leverage by exposing America’s sensitivity to high gas prices. Iran returned to the negotiating table after Operation Epic Fury, but it was already at the table the day the operation began, making similar offers. 

The president’s art-of-the-deal reputation, already frayed after his tariff madness, is now in tatters. He tore up Barack Obama’s comprehensive deal with Iran, brokered with the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and the European Union. It wasn’t perfect, but it subjected Iran’s nuclear program to strict limits and intrusive inspections. Exactly what Trump and Iran’s negotiators have agreed on to reopen the Strait is unknown, as no text has been released and both sides are giving differing accounts. But Trump’s unwillingness to give a direct answer posed by the Times—regarding whether his agreement matches Obama’s terms on uranium enrichment levels—strongly suggests his hastily cobbled together deal has not improved upon the meticulously crafted containment program forged by his predecessor.  

But Trump’s humiliation pales in comparison to Benjamin Netanyahu’s. 

Prime Minister for most of the last 17 years, “Bibi” bet his legacy on three intertwined gambits. The Israeli government should break with its historically bipartisan approach to U.S. relations and tilt toward the Republicans, abandon the Palestinian peace process and its goal of a two-state solution, and scuttle arms control and diplomacy with Iran in favor of vanquishing it militarily. 

In Trump, Netanyahu saw a Republican who could fulfill his ambitions of war against Iran and was susceptible to arguments that presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Joe Biden chose to ignore. But almost everyone who hitches their wagon to Trump eventually learns that the now-octogenarian president cares only about himself. He does not share your goals and will cut you loose once you’re no longer helpful to him. 

That the two didn’t perfectly align was evident after Trump’s first term. While Trump proposed a peace deal on terms heavily favorable to Israel, Netanyahu undermined him by pushing for annexation of the Jordan Valley and all West Bank settlements. Trump angrily stopped him and later vented to an interviewer, “I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make peace.”  

Trump was also livid when Netanyahu recognized Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Yet they mended fences upon Trump’s return to the White House in 2025. Trump abetted Netanyahu’s leveling of Gaza and hoped to exploit the aftermath by tasking a handpicked Board of Peace with disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza as a Trump-style resort destination—“GazVegas,” some joked—but that project has stalled. And Trump greenlit Operation Epic Fury in late February after Netanyahu’s aggressive lobbying. 

But as in the first term, when it comes to military operations, Trump’s self-interest does not overlap with Netanyahu’s. Trump loves the accolades that come with handshake deals and is thirsty for a Nobel Peace Prize, whereas, as Trump has surmised, Netanyahu doesn’t believe peace is possible. 

So when Netanyahu tried to scuttle this latest round of diplomacy with Iran with strikes against Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, Trump publicly berated the 76-year-old Likud leader, telling him not to respond to Iran’s retaliatory air strikes, and plowed ahead with negotiations. On Tuesday, Netanyahu groused about the still-unreleased deal, “This agreement was made by the United States … We have our own interests.”

Amos Harel, the military correspondent and defense analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, summed up how disastrous Trump’s deal is for Netanyahu: 

Not only does it appear that the American-Iranian agreement won’t satisfy even one of the goals [Netanyahu] outlined with great self-confidence when he began the current war in late February (the regime won’t fall, Iran’s nuclear program won’t be destroyed, and both its missile program and aid given to regional proxies won’t end).  

Not only is the fire from Lebanon continuing. But Iran is now, once again, establishing a new equation in which any Israeli attack on Beirut will bring an Iranian attack on Israel.  

In practice, we are sliding into a reality of repeated rounds of fighting in which Iranian missiles launched at Israel in between lulls are being depicted as a reasonable situation.  

So, let’s sum up the ways Netanyahu’s strategy has miserably failed.  

1. The Iranian regime is not only still standing, but the power of the hard-right IRGC has been augmented.  

2. The nascent nuclear agreement is looking like a slapdash version of the Obama deal Netanyahu railed against 11 years ago. (His 2015 trashing of Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in an address to Congress sped Israel’s rupture with Democrats.) 

3. Israel’s standing with Americans has sunk, with 60 percent of respondents in a recent Pew Research Center poll expressing an unfavorable view. While a 58 percent majority of Republicans retain a favorable impression, among Democrats, unfavorability is at 80 percent.  

Americans, and especially Democrats, are turning against military aid to Israel. Last month, a New York Times poll found 57 percent opposed “additional economic and military support to Israel.” The partisan gulf was massive, with 66 percent of Republicans in support versus 25 percent of Democrats.  

4. In turn, Democratic politicians are increasingly supportive of either conditioning or cutting off military aid to Israel. Furthermore, as Trump’s reprimand of Netanyahu shows, Republican support for Israeli military actions is hardly reliable. 

5. No longer can Israel command bipartisan support that transcends the typical swings of the political pendulum. At the same time, Iran has a freer hand than ever before to attack Israel directly.  

Whether Netanyahu’s strategic failures are enough to oust him in parliamentary elections this year remains to be seen. A poll released earlier this month shows Netanyahu’s governing coalition falling 11 seats short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the Knesset. Still, the opposition is splintered among several parties, and Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in the nation’s history, has an uncanny knack for survival. 

But whatever happens electorally to one Israeli politician, what should be painfully clear is that Netanyahu’s partisanship and militarism only led to pyrrhic military victories over Hamas and Hezbollah, while strengthening Iran, weakening the American relationship, alienating global opinion, and leaving everyday Israelis less safe.  

Trump’s foreign policy has been narcissistic, impulsive, and strategically shambolic. But at least his love of the ribbon-cutting keeps him from sinking into endless military quagmires and from embracing Netanyahu’s dark worldview. The biggest loser of the Iran War is Bibi. His vision of a Middle East where peace is not possible, but Israel reigns supreme, has faltered.  

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