‘If Iran gets a bomb it will be Bibi’s’: Trump’s deal outline sparks alarm in Israel

Netanyahu’s joint war with the US began with talk of regime change in Tehran but may leave him with few strategic gains When Donald Trump launched a pre-emptive war on Iran with Israel in February, many in the country hailed the campaign as the crowning triumph of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and diplomatic career. Three months on the regime is still in power in Tehran, Trump is chasing a deal that will reopen the strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, and the reported terms have provoked alarm, dismay and anger in Israel. “Israel is completely beholden to the decisions of a capricious, hollow and desperate American president,” Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, one of several commentators who condemned both the deal and the Israeli prime minister. “The greater the fury, the greater the roar, the greater the defeat,” he added, in a scathing account of Netanyahu’s strategy before and during the campaign that the US called Operation Epic Fury and Israel named Operation Roaring Lion. “If the agreement currently being talked about is signed, the damage will be even worse. The billions that will flow into the regime’s pockets will go a long way.” At the beginning of