The emerging deal between the United States and Iran represents an existential danger to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.
With his coalition fracturing and elections approaching, Netanyahu can’t survive a peace that leaves Hezbollah intact and Iran’s nuclear program deferred. The only path that may keep his future viable now runs through Lebanon.
This may help explain why, just hours after President Donald Trump announced that a deal with Iran was “largely negotiated” through talks that excluded Israel, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to “increase the blows” against Hezbollah, adding on Monday that “we are deepening our operation in Lebanon.”
Israel has now issued evacuation orders for two of southern Lebanon’s biggest cities, and Israeli aircraft have struck over 100 sites in southern Lebanon, adding to a death toll that has now surpassed 3,000 since the latest escalation in March, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. This comes as Lebanese and Israeli officials are engaged in historic, U.S.-brokered talks in Washington, including a security track that was due to be launched on May 29.
When the U.S. and Israel initiated strikes on Iran in late February, Netanyau framed the aims of the campaign in maximalist terms: destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacity, sever Tehran’s support for regional proxies, and, most ambitiously, overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Three months later, Iran is still standing. The deal taking shape between the Trump administration and the Islamic Republic addresses almost none of these objectives in the preliminary phase, focusing instead on restarting maritime shipping and bringing an end to direct U.S.-Iran hostilities.
The blowback from Israeli politicians and commentators has been fierce. Israeli opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the deal was “bad for Israel, bad for the region, bad for the people of Iran.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a key coalition partner in Netanyahu’s government, framed the proposal in similar terms, calling it “an agreement that can harm the State of Israel.”
Against this background, Netanyahu’s predicament is especially acute. He co-launched a war that degraded Iran’s capabilities but failed to bring Tehran to heel. He has been excluded from negotiations on the conflict’s outcome and now faces an electorate that is expected to hit the polls as early as September. With these elections looming, only 10% of Israelis viewed the Iran campaign as a significant success when polled in mid-April.
The dominant analysis holds that Netanyahu is trying to drag out the election timeline, hoping to buy more time to achieve something he can market to voters on the security and diplomatic fronts. Lebanon is a key part of that calculation.
The immediate trigger for the escalation in Lebanon has a tactical dimension distinct from the emerging Iran deal. Hezbollah has deployed fiber-optic drones against Israeli troops occupying a self-declared buffer zone or “Yellow Line” in southern Lebanon. These cheap drones are unjammable because they avoid radio frequencies. Multiple Israeli soldiers have been killed or severely wounded by these drones, and some have struck civilian homes within Israel.
In response, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, approved a $700 million budget for counter-drone operations and added that playing defense was insufficient. “For every explosive drone, ten buildings in Beirut should fall,” Smotrich said. The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, agreed that Beirut should be struck. Ben-Gvir went furthest: “It is time for the Prime Minister to knock on Trump’s desk and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon. We need to cut off the electricity in Lebanon..and return to a fierce war.”
Hellbound and Down 