(José Niño, Headline USA) U.S. spy agencies warned the Trump administration that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will probably undermine President Donald Trump’s pursuit of a durable peace agreement with Iran, the Washington Post reported.
Analysts determined that Netanyahu confronts powerful domestic political forces pushing him to sustain military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, a course that would breach a fundamental requirement of the nascent accord calling for a cessation of fighting there.
According to the Post, Israeli warplanes struck targets throughout southern Lebanon on Friday following a Hezbollah drone assault that claimed four Israeli soldiers’ lives. The escalation caused U.S. and Iranian diplomats to delay negotiations set for Switzerland. Vice President JD Vance scrapped his planned trip to head the American delegation.
At a Wednesday press conference in France unveiling the U.S. and Iran “memorandum of understanding,” Trump conceded tensions with his Israeli counterpart. The president said he has a “little dispute over Lebanon” with Netanyahu and urged the Israeli leader to not “knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.”
The classified assessment found that Netanyahu’s political fortunes hinge on proving to domestic audiences that he refuses to pull forces from Lebanon and intends to intensify operations against Hezbollah, a U.S. official with knowledge of the report told the Post.
A May survey conducted by the Institute of National Security Studies found that 70 percent of Jewish Israelis favor stepping up military action against Hezbollah.
Members of the Israeli cabinet offered no sign of backing down. “For every tear shed by an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers should cry. All of Lebanon should burn,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir wrote on social media Friday.
Danny Citrinowicz, who previously served as an Israeli military intelligence analyst and now works at the Institute for National Security Studies, warned that Netanyahu courts “huge friction” with Trump. The American president initiated the war against Iran on February 28 after Netanyahu pushed for it. That conflict has drained tens of billions of dollars from U.S. coffers, driven global fuel prices higher, and resulted in 13 American military deaths.
“Bibi’s in a very tough situation,” Citrinowicz said. “He’s seeing his greatest rival, the Iranian regime, being strengthened by the U.S. administration—and he cannot do anything about it.”
The White House pushed back sharply. “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower,” Vice President Vance told reporters Thursday. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
Netanyahu refused to budge. “We will stay in the Lebanon security buffer zone for as long as necessary,” he told journalists in Jerusalem. On some issues, “we see less eye to eye,” he said about his dealings with Trump.
The Israel Defense Forces presently control over 200 square miles of Lebanese land and have forced more than one million people from their homes. Lebanese officials report that over 3,000 individuals have perished since military operations commenced in mid-March.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
