How Israel is frustrating Donald Trump’s Iran plans

The temporary resumption of hostilities highlighted Mr Trump’s twin failures in controlling his Israeli ally and cajoling Iran to accept a lasting truce. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has now defied the president twice in rapid succession. First, on June 7th Israel attacked Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, bombing what it claimed were offices of Hizbullah, the Shia militia that is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy. Less than a week earlier Mr Trump had imposed a limited ceasefire on Israel and Hizbullah that prohibited Israel from striking Beirut. Israel claimed its bombs were responding to Hizbullah rocket attacks.

Iran then sprang to Hizbullah’s defence, firing a salvo of 11 missiles towards northern Israel, but failing to cause any damage. Mr Trump thought this was enough, telling a reporter at Axios he was “going to call Netanyahu right now and tell him not to strike back”. Instead, Israel’s prime minister ignored the president’s instructions for a second time. Israeli fighter jets launched ballistic missiles at Iran, hitting targets including missile-launchers, an air-defence installation and a petrochemical plant that Israel claims is part of Iran’s missile industry. Iran struck back, firing 20 missiles at Israel, one of which hit the desert near the Dead Sea. The rest were either intercepted or fell short.

Both countries have now made their point. Iran is unwilling to abandon Hizbullah, which it helped found in 1982 and in which it has invested billions of dollars. The militia remains one of the most important means through which it can project power regionally. Israel, which now occupies a swathe of southern Lebanon, is determined to keep battering it. For decades the two countries fought a shadow war in which direct attacks were taboo. Today, both are prepared to resume firing and to risk another conflagration in order to prove a point.

All this leaves Mr Trump with a dilemma. He has already tried and failed to impose ceasefires on Israel, in both Lebanon and Iran. He has frozen it out of the negotiations with Iran that are being brokered by Pakistan and other intermediaries. But leaving his partner-in-war out in the cold has not worked. After Iran’s latest salvo, the president claimed that Mr Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept any deal he reaches with Iran: “I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” he told the Financial Times. And yet Mr Netanyahu kept shooting.

It is hard to gauge the state of their relationship from Mr Trump’s rebukes of the Israeli prime minister. Mr Netanyahu’s defiance has not led to any obvious, immediate repercussions. In a recent telephone conversation the president told the prime minister: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.” And yet Mr Netanyahu’s aides insist the two leaders are still close. “No other world leader has a closer relationship with Trump,” says one Israeli official. “But that doesn’t mean we know what he’s going to decide.”

Although Mr Trump may be willing to tear a strip off Mr Netanyahu, he still is reluctant to break with his ally. Co-operation between the two armed forces is such that America could have blocked Israel’s strikes on Iran, had the president chosen to do so.

Mr Trump is not holding back because of political constraints. In the past, American leaders feared paying a heavy domestic price for confronting Israel. Now public support for Israel is waning. The collapse spans partisan, generational and religious boundaries. A Gallup survey released in February showed that, for the first time in two decades of polling, more Americans sympathised with Palestinians (41%) than Israelis (36%), a reversal from 55% to 26% in Israel’s favour prior to the October 7th attacks. Democrats—the party backed by most Jewish-American voters—are especially disillusioned, but according to further polling, 57% of Republicans aged 18 to 49 now also hold an unfavourable view of Israel.

Some officials are keen to blame Israel for America’s failures in Iran, either to achieve its war aims or to secure a lasting ceasefire. They are briefing accordingly. A recent leak about suspicions in the Pentagon that Israel is spying on members of Mr Trump’s inner circle, including his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, may well be part of such efforts.

Mr Netanyahu has more pressing concerns than the long-term erosion of American support for Israel. He will face an election by October and is coming under intense criticism, both from his allies and opponents, for failing to deliver decisive results in the wars Israel has been fighting for nearly three years. The Iranian regime retains its nuclear and missile programmes. Hamas, the Islamic movement that carried out the October 7th massacres, still controls the parts of Gaza that Israel does not. Likewise, Hizbullah, despite being pummelled by Israel, remains capable of launching rockets and drones, while enjoying Iranian missile cover.

Since Mr Trump first announced a ceasefire with Iran on April 8th, Israel has tried to decouple the Lebanese front from the Iranian one and continue its campaign against Hizbullah. For the president, the priority is reaching a deal with Iran. Increasingly, he seems to have concluded that doing so will require him to impose limits on Israel.

As for Israel, it has once again proven it can strike targets throughout the Middle East, from Beirut to Tehran, but is failing to translate this into strategic gains. And just as dangerous: it risks losing its American ally in the process.