The ink on the memorandum of understanding had barely dried before Benjamin Netanyahu launched a parallel campaign to undo it. According to CNN, the Israeli prime minister is mobilizing right-wing U.S. media figures and sympathetic Republican senators to apply pressure on Donald Trump and shape — or sink — the final Iran agreement before it can be finalized. The strategy is familiar: rather than confront Washington through official diplomatic channels, Netanyahu is working the same informal American network he has relied on for decades, using proxies to say in public what he cannot say directly to the president without further straining a relationship that has visibly frayed.
The MoU, signed electronically and announced jointly by Iran and Pakistan on June 18, outlines a 60-day framework for negotiations. The first 30 days are dedicated to practical steps — Iran gradually reopens the Strait of Hormuz while Washington ends its naval blockade of Iranian ports. The following 30 days are reserved for technical negotiations that must produce a final agreement. What the MoU does not include — and what Israeli officials are loudest about — is any restriction on Iran’s ballistic missile program or its support for regional proxy networks. From Jerusalem’s perspective, an agreement that ends the war without addressing either of those issues is worse than no agreement at all.
The Levers Netanyahu Is Pulling
Fox News host Mark Levin became the most visible early voice in the campaign Netanyahu is reportedly orchestrating, describing the MoU as an “outrage” and singling out the omission of Iran’s missile program as the deal’s most egregious flaw. The reference to the reconstruction and investment fund — a $300 billion commitment from Washington and regional states to rebuild Iran’s damaged infrastructure — drew particular fire, with Levin branding it a “slush fund.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called it a bad deal for Israel and for the world. War Minister Israel Katz threatened further strikes on Iran, warning that any Iranian retaliation over Lebanon would be met with full-force military action. The Israeli political establishment, coalition and opposition alike, is speaking with unusual unity against a deal their own prime minister helped make possible by lobbying Washington into the war in the first place.
The contradiction is striking. Israel pushed the United States into a conflict that it could not control, then found itself excluded from the exit negotiations that ended it. Hebrew media reported that Israel was blocked from viewing the full MoU text — a detail that speaks volumes about where Jerusalem sits in Trump’s diplomatic calculus right now. The Wall Street Journal reported separately that Trump is now fact-checking what Netanyahu tells him during their phone calls, a striking departure from a relationship that previously operated on unconditional trust and a clear signal that the Israeli prime minister’s credibility in Washington has been spent.
Lebanon as the Live Tripwire
The most immediately dangerous element of Netanyahu’s posture is not rhetorical — it is operational. The MoU explicitly links Lebanon to the ceasefire framework, treating an end to hostilities on both fronts as part of the same agreement. Israel has not complied. Since the MoU was announced, Israeli strikes on Lebanon have continued daily, and the country remains under partial Israeli military occupation in its south. Iran responded to one of those strikes with a missile attack on Israel. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes but stopped short of a larger assault — for now.
This cycle is precisely the mechanism that could blow up the 60-day negotiating window before technical talks produce anything binding. Trump told Netanyahu directly in a recent call to stop bombing Lebanon: “Why are you blowing up buildings? Stop blowing up buildings.” The instruction has been ignored. Every Israeli strike that follows gives Tehran grounds to argue that the ceasefire conditions are not being honored, which in turn gives Iran’s hardliners — who never wanted a deal — a reason to walk away from technical negotiations before the 60-day clock expires.
What Netanyahu Actually Wants
Netanyahu’s own assessment, according to the Israeli source cited by CNN, is that there will be no final agreement — that Tehran was never willing to negotiate in good faith and will not accept genuine restrictions on its nuclear program. That assessment may be correct. But it is also a self-fulfilling position for a prime minister who is actively working to prevent the deal from succeeding. If Netanyahu mobilizes enough pressure through conservative media and Republican senators to force Trump to harden U.S. demands during technical negotiations, the talks collapse — and Netanyahu can point to Iranian intransigence as the cause rather than his own interference.
The political timeline gives him a narrow window. Israeli elections are due by late October. Netanyahu needs to present voters with something resembling a security achievement before then. A collapsing U.S.-Iran deal — blamed on Tehran’s bad faith — is politically more useful to him than a functioning agreement that leaves Hezbollah intact and Iran’s missile program untouched. Meanwhile, Trump’s midterm calculations point in the opposite direction. A completed deal raises energy prices, eases inflation pressure, and gives the administration a diplomatic trophy to carry into November. The two leaders’ political interests, once aligned, are now structurally opposed.
The 60-day framework is fragile by design. It was built to give both Washington and Tehran enough time to reach a face-saving agreement while managing their respective domestic pressures. What it did not fully account for is a third party with strong incentives to ensure it fails — one with direct access to the U.S. media ecosystem and a well-practiced ability to shape American political discourse around Middle East policy. Whether Trump holds his position or allows Netanyahu’s campaign to pull him back toward confrontation will likely determine whether the next 60 days produce a durable settlement or simply a longer pause before the next round.
Original analysis inspired by News Desk from The Cradle. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
By ThinkTanksMonitor
