For Israelis across the political and military spectrum, the newly announced US-Iran peace deal to end the ongoing conflict is far more than a simple diplomatic breakthrough between Washington and Tehran. To the country’s ruling elite, this agreement marks a defining strategic turning point—one that threatens to erode Israel’s regional standing, fray its most critical alliance with the United States, and hasten the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long political career.
Though a deal had been broadly anticipated since April, Pakistan’s official confirmation of the agreement on Sunday sent immediate shockwaves through Israeli political and military circles. While key details of the deal’s terms remain undisclosed and open to speculation, one thing is clear: the end of the joint US-Israeli campaign against Iran was not supposed to unfold this way. When Netanyahu launched Israel’s military offensive against Iran on February 28, the stated goals were unambiguous: dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and bring about the collapse of the Iranian government.
Nearly four months later, none of these core objectives have been achieved. In fact, Iran leaves the conflict in a stronger geopolitical position than it held before February. It retains full control over its nuclear and missile development programs, and the Iranian leadership has emerged politically consolidated even after major Israeli strikes, including the reported assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran is now increasingly recognized as an ascendant regional power, with Arab Gulf states shifting their alignment toward Tehran and away from Jerusalem.
For Israel, this new landscape has left the country in a position of geopolitical isolation unseen for decades, a sentiment that has grown steadily among the Israeli public. This sense of estrangement began building over the past two and a half years, as Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza sparked widespread international boycotts. But the current situation marks a far more alarming shift: Israel now finds itself increasingly distanced even from its closest ally, the United States, with multiple reports documenting a deepening rift between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.
To most Israelis, any fracture in the US-Israel alliance is viewed as an existential threat. For generations, Israel’s national security doctrine has been anchored to its strategic partnership with Washington. Today, both sitting government ministers and senior military commanders acknowledge they are uncertain of the deal’s long-term implications, scrambling to adjust to a rapidly shifting regional order that defies their past assumptions.
Domestically, the agreement carries profound political consequences for Netanyahu, whose right-wing coalition already trails opposition blocs in pre-election polling ahead of upcoming national votes. Speaking at a televised press conference on Monday, Netanyahu doubled down on his narrative of Israeli victory, claiming the country had achieved major gains across all recent conflict zones: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. He argued that without Israel’s two major military strikes on Iran in 2025 and February 2026, Tehran would have already acquired a functional nuclear weapon. Addressing the Israeli public, he claimed he had “saved the State of Israel from annihilation” — rhetoric that has only widened the growing gap between the prime minister and an increasingly skeptical public. Rather than presenting himself as an accountable leader answerable to voters, Netanyahu positioned himself as a singular, legendary figure above the fray of day-to-day politics, a framing that has fallen flat for many Israelis.
While polling currently puts Netanyahu’s coalition at between 50 and 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, the full impact of the US-Iran deal has not yet been reflected in public opinion. Even so, current trends suggest Netanyahu will fall far short of the 61-seat majority needed to form a new government if elections were held today. It remains unclear whether the deal includes explicit language requiring Israel to withdraw its military forces from southern Lebanon, or whether Trump will pressure Netanyahu to pull out even without a formal clause mandating the move. For Netanyahu, Lebanon is already a major political vulnerability, and opposition parties have seized on the deal to criticize his leadership — focusing less on the decision to go to war, and more on the chaotic mismanagement of the conflict that led to this outcome.
An Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon could mark the beginning of the end for Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, a leading opposition figure, has seen his support surge in recent polling, and he is now widely viewed as the top contender to replace Netanyahu. This week could prove to be the defining turning point in the race for prime minister. Netanyahu is increasingly framed by voters and commentators alike as a leader mired in multiple open-ended conflicts with no clear strategic goals or exit plans, and his public rift with Trump has only reinforced the narrative of growing Israeli and Netanyahu-led isolation. By contrast, Eisenkot is increasingly seen as a measured, responsible leader capable of making clear, strategic choices about Israel’s conflicts. This contrast could well prove decisive in the upcoming election.
Beyond the fate of Netanyahu’s political career, the US-Iran deal poses a fundamental challenge to Israel’s long-standing approach to regional security. For years under Netanyahu, Israel has prioritized overwhelming military force as the primary solution to regional challenges, sidelining diplomatic engagement. This trend accelerated dramatically after the October 2023 Hamas attack, when military force became the dominant tool for advancing Israeli policy, with the Israeli military — particularly under current Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir — abandoning the broader, more nuanced strategic outlook that guided its leadership in years past. Today, the army’s only answer to security challenges is total destruction, framed as a way to boost Israeli deterrence. Even as senior officers continue to push for expanded military operations across the region, strikes like the recent attack on Beirut’s Dahieh district have carried significant long-term strategic costs for Israel. If Israel is forced to withdraw from Lebanon, it would deal a major blow to the prestige of the Israeli military, which has grown into a powerful domestic political actor that has consistently pushed for expanded conflict. While Netanyahu and his far-right allies Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are widely recognized as the driving force behind Israel’s shift toward prolonged conflict, the military’s outsized role in shaping these policies has received far less public scrutiny. The new deal calls into question not just the military’s approach to conflict, but Israel’s entire framework for managing its interests across the Middle East.
Netanyahu appears to grasp the scale of the potential changes better than most of his political rivals. If the agreement ultimately forces Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon under Iranian pressure, while a new regional alignment uniting Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey takes shape, the consequences will extend far beyond Lebanon’s borders. These shifts will almost certainly reshape the ongoing conflict in Gaza as well. As Israel grows weaker and more distanced from Washington, Iran and its regional allies will likely push for the same changes in Gaza that they are demanding in Lebanon. Regional powers including Qatar and Turkey may also extract concessions from the Trump administration in exchange for maintaining ties with Washington rather than shifting closer to Iran and China. Those concessions would almost certainly include changes to Israel’s current control over Gaza. This is not a new dynamic: in 1991, the US rewarded Arab and Muslim states for joining the Gulf War coalition by brokering the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the Madrid Conference. A similar dynamic could emerge today, even in a different form, putting Gaza and the occupied West Bank at the center of regional negotiations in the near future.
While opposition figures accuse Netanyahu of damaging the US-Israel special relationship, repairing that alliance may prove far more difficult than many assume. A single visit to the White House will not be enough to reverse the dramatic shifts in Israel’s strategic position.
Standing alone in defiance of Washington could become the core theme of Netanyahu’s reelection campaign. For that reason, it is entirely possible that Israel will refuse to withdraw from Lebanon even if Trump formally demands a pullout, risking a far deeper rupture with the White House. Earlier this week, Yinon Magal, a prominent Channel 14 journalist widely seen as close to Netanyahu, floated a possible name for a future Israeli military operation against Iran: “A People Dwells Alone.” Echoing the myth of Masada, where Jewish rebels chose death over surrender to Roman forces, the phrase frames a vision of Israel fighting its own battles independently, even without the support of its most critical ally. Israel retains formidable military capabilities, including a powerful air force and an undocumented nuclear arsenal, and for the foreseeable future, it can sustain its regional isolation through military superiority.
Netanyahu will almost certainly frame himself as the only leader willing to defy international pressure and protect Israeli citizens from external threats, leaning into this narrative of lonely defiance. But if Israel rejects the path of isolation that Netanyahu is currently charting, this week will go down in history as a watershed moment for the Middle East. Israel could be forced to accept foreign-led policy changes not just in Lebanon, but across the occupied Palestinian territories.