Trump’s Iran deal leaves Israel feeling sold out by its closest ally
The deal President Trump struck with Iran this week was never going to please Israel. But the scale of the anger now pouring out of the country suggests something deeper than policy disagreement. Israelis across the political spectrum say they have been betrayed by the one American president they thought would never turn on them.
Outrage has been building since the terms of the memorandum of understanding became public earlier this month. An interim ceasefire between the US and Iran, signed on June 14, lifted the American naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and opened the door for Iranian oil exports to resume. In exchange, Iran agreed to halt its missile strikes against Israel and its proxies’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. For Israelis, the deal reads as a unilateral American retreat from a war Israel spent months fighting alongside the United States, with no corresponding concessions on the threats that matter most to them: Irans nuclear program, its ballistic missile arsenal, and Hezbollah’s entrenchment in southern Lebanon.
“You could’ve been the greatest,” read one widely circulated social media post directed at Trump, capturing the mood of a nation that believed the US president was uniquely sympathetic to its security concerns.
In the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the sentiment is raw. Avi Perez, 55, told the Guardian: “It’s a big mistake. We were betrayed by President Trump.” In middle Israel, the phrase used by pollsters to describe the broad, traditionally centrist majority, there is fear that Iran will use the breathing room provided by the deal to rebuild its military capacity, restock Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal, and emerge stronger in five years than it was before the war.
“The deal is a one-way street,” said one Israeli reservist who served in Lebanon. “We did the fighting. America did the bombing from the air. Now Trump signs a paper and tells us to stop while Iran still has thousands of rockets pointed at our cities. What exactly did we win?”
The contradiction is sharpest for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has staked his political career on the strength of his personal relationship with Trump. That bet now looks like a losing one. Netanyahu was not consulted on the deal’s final terms, and his government’s protests were brushed aside by Washington. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made the point bluntly on social media: “Trump’s agreement does not bind us. We are not partners to it.”
Ben-Gvir’s post is not just bluster. It reflects a real fracture. Israeli officials have made clear they will continue military operations in southern Lebanon regardless of what the US-Iran deal says. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded by insisting the agreement was “unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon” and that the US must ensure Israel complies. That puts Washington in an impossible position: enforce a deal Israel rejects, or watch the ceasefire collapse on both fronts.
Meanwhile, Iran’s military has warned of “reciprocal action” if the US does not honor the memorandum’s commitments. Tehran demanded that Israel end its attacks on Lebanon and halt its expanding ground operations there. The same Iranian leadership that agreed to pause its missile strikes is now signaling that the pause has limits. If Israeli bombs keep falling on Lebanese towns, the deal unravels.
On the ground in southern Lebanon, there is no sign of restraint. Israeli forces have expanded their zone of control by an estimated 1,000 square kilometers since the beginning of the year, issuing displacement orders for 29 Lebanese towns in the process. Hezbollah, battered but not destroyed, has continued low-level rocket fire across the border. The “ceasefire” exists on paper in Washington and Tehran. On the border between Israel and Lebanon, it means nothing.
The domestic fallout in Israel is equally unstable. Netanyahu now faces the worst of both worlds: his far-right coalition partners accuse him of letting Trump sell Israel out, while the opposition says he should have secured the country’s interests before the deal was signed. Political analysts in Tel Aviv are already writing the obituary of his government. “Netanyahu has lost control of his own narrative,” one wrote. “Trump was his shield. Now the shield is gone.”
There is a historical echo here that Israelis do not miss. In 2015, when the Obama administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, Netanyahu flew to Washington to denounce it before Congress. At the time, he warned that the deal would pave Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb. Trump withdrew from that deal in 2018. Now Trump has signed a deal of his own, on terms that give Israel even less say than the one Netanyahu fought against a decade ago.
What has changed is the relationship itself. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy ultimately proved no different with Israel than it has with any other country. The friendship was real, but it was conditional. Once the cost of pleasing Israel exceeded the benefit of a deal with Iran, Trump chose the deal.
That calculation carries a warning for every ally watching from the sidelines. If the United States under Trump can walk away from Israel, whose security has been the defining commitment of postwar American foreign policy in the Middle East, no one is safe. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Baltic states, Ukraine: all must now ask themselves whether Trump’s signature on a security agreement means anything when the President’s priorities shift.
In the streets of Jerusalem, the question is simpler. “How do we defend ourselves now?” one protester asked. The answer is the same as it was before Trump: alone.