The American president launched an extraordinary verbal assault on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he revealed the contours of a newly struck US-Iran agreement and fumed over an unauthorised Israeli attack on Lebanon. In an interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump described Netanyahu as “a very difficult guy” who “should be very grateful to us” because without Washington’s diplomatic intervention, Tehran would already possess a nuclear weapon. “If Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t last two hours,” Trump said. His anger sharpened in a subsequent exchange with Axios, where he used expletives to condemn the Israeli leader’s “lack of judgement” after Sunday’s airstrike north of the Litani River, a move he charged had nearly sabotaged the delicate Iran talks.

Seen from Washington, the rebuke marks an accelerating personalisation of what was once a bedrock strategic relationship. Trump did not stop at criticism of Netanyahu; he extolled the constructive roles played by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in helping to create a settlement and in refraining from escalatory actions during the Strait of Hormuz crisis. This juxtaposition — lavish praise for geopolitical rivals alongside scorching censure of a traditional ally — reflects an administration that views alliances through a purely transactional lens. Officials in European capitals, already uneasy about the speed of the US-Iran rapprochement, now worry that the transatlantic coordination on Middle East security has frayed beyond quick repair.

From Tel Aviv, the humiliation is acute. Netanyahu’s office has not formally responded, but Israeli analysts note the prime minister’s longstanding insistence on a unilateral right to strike Iranian assets placed Israel and its patron on a collision course. The Lebanese operation, which a senior Israeli military source said targeted an advanced weapons convoy, was deemed essential for national defence in Jerusalem, yet it exposed the gulf between the allies’ red lines when Trump’s peace initiative hung in the balance. Arab diplomatic circles, meanwhile, interpret the dressing-down less as a defence of Lebanese sovereignty than as proof that Washington’s priority is now firmly the nuclear agreement — and that Israel’s ability to dictate the regional agenda has been diminished.

The warning that Israel could be annihilated in two hours is not merely rhetorical excess. Independent arms-control experts have long modelled that a nuclear-capable Iran would alter the existential calculus for a small state with no strategic depth, making even a single warhead a deterrent of immense power. Trump’s bluntness is unprecedented for an American president, but the underlying assessment is one many strategists in London and Paris privately share. The danger, however, is that airing it so publicly weakens Israel’s deterrence posture and empowers hardliners in Tehran who see the US president as distancing himself from the Zionist state.

Looking ahead, the durability of the Iran accord and the maintenance of a fragile calm along the Blue Line will depend heavily on whether Washington can restrain both Israel and Hezbollah. Trump has made clear he expects “no more attacks from Israel anywhere in Lebanon,” but his own unpredictability and the raw bad blood with Netanyahu inject a volatile element into the nascent peace architecture. Should the Israeli prime minister conclude that his country’s security requires defying the White House again, he risks not only a diplomatic rupture but the collapse of an agreement that, for now, keeps Iran’s centrifuges under international scrutiny.