In his first public remarks since Washington and Tehran unveiled a memorandum of understanding to end their shadow war, Benjamin Netanyahu struck a characteristically defiant tone. Addressing a televised press conference in Jerusalem on Monday evening, the Israeli prime minister insisted that the joint US-Israeli military campaign had “saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear annihilation” and declared that Iran would never possess a nuclear weapon “with or without an agreement”. Yet beneath the triumphalism, Netanyahu acknowledged a growing estrangement from his most indispensable ally. “President Trump and I do not always see eye to eye,” he said, adding with studied understatement that such differences “happen even in the best of families.”

That carefully calibrated language could not mask the political earthquake the deal has triggered inside Israel. The accord, expected to be signed in Geneva on Friday, reportedly commits Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, halt military operations across all fronts including Lebanon, and negotiate permanent limits on its nuclear programme. For Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and much of the Israeli public, however, the terms represent not peace but a capitulation. Opposition figures have branded the deal a “disaster”, while even members of the government fumed that Washington had betrayed its closest regional partner. The prime minister, already fighting a corruption trial and facing elections in October, announced he would run again and “intend to win”, but analysts in London and Tel Aviv note that his political survival now hinges on a war he failed to conclude on his own terms.

Viewed from southern Lebanon, the dissonance is immediate and dangerous. Hours after the deal was announced, thousands of displaced Lebanese families began returning to their villages, only to find Israeli forces still entrenched in a newly declared buffer zone. Netanyahu vowed that troops would remain in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria “for as long as necessary” and that the struggle was “not over”. Defence Minister Israel Katz pledged to respond “with full force” to any provocation. This posture directly contradicts the spirit of the ceasefire and, according to reports in the US media, nearly scuttled the negotiations: President Trump was said to be “very angry” over an Israeli strike on Beirut just as the deal was being finalised.

For Netanyahu, the memorandum of understanding represents the unravelling of a grand strategic wager. He had gambled that a joint campaign with the United States would dismantle Iran’s proxy network, topple the clerical regime in Tehran, and rehabilitate his own legacy after the intelligence failures of October 7. Instead, the Islamic Republic emerges from the conflict with its nuclear infrastructure damaged but its regional influence intact, while Israel finds itself diplomatically isolated and militarily overextended. A senior Haaretz military analyst described the outcome as Netanyahu’s greatest failure since the Hamas attack, noting that the “absolute victory” he repeatedly promised has shrunk to a partial and precarious arrangement.

The coming weeks will test whether Netanyahu can navigate the contradiction between his domestic rhetoric and the reality of American disengagement. He is reportedly seeking an urgent meeting with Trump to align their diverging positions, but the US president’s patience with Israeli unilateralism appears to be wearing thin. As election season approaches, the prime minister must convince a war-weary and increasingly sceptical electorate that he remains the indispensable guardian of the nation’s security, even as the strategic architecture he built crumbles around him. The deal may have paused the regional conflagration, but for Netanyahu it has opened a new and deeply personal battle for political survival.