Netanyahu’s War, Trump’s Deal
Iran’s bar for victory was survival. It survived. Approximately 440 kilograms of enriched uranium — enough, if further enriched, for ten or more nuclear weapons — remain in Iranian hands, reportedly stored in hardened underground facilities at Isfahan that US strikes have not destroyed and may not be able to reach without a ground operation. Its missile capabilities, though degraded, remain. The regime is still in control. Whatever this ceasefire is, it is not a victory for Israel.
The goals were ambitious and explicit. Trump stated the objectives of the war were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, eliminate their navy, prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons, and stop Iranian proxies from holding power. Netanyahu, for his part, consistently communicated that the central objective was regime change. These were not modest aims. They were a promise to fundamentally alter the strategic reality of the Middle East. The ceasefire announced last night tells a different story.
Iran’s missile capabilities are degraded but intact. The enriched uranium remains. The regime survived — and the dynastic transfer of power from Khamenei to his son, unprecedented in the Islamic Republic, signals institutional fragility, not collapse. Trump and Netanyahu’s objectives had been diverging for weeks. The ceasefire has made that fracture permanent.
The distance between ambition and outcome is sharpest when measured against what Netanyahu told Trump before the first strike. On February 11, according to reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in the New York Times, Netanyahu made a hard sell in the White House Situation Room — suggesting Iran was ripe for regime change and that a joint US-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic. His team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The Strait of Hormuz would remain open. The regime would be so weakened it could not retaliate against US interests in neighboring countries. American officials were not convinced. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was blunt: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe described the regime change scenarios as “farcical.”
Every one of Netanyahu’s predictions was wrong. Iran closed the Strait within days of the first strike. It continued firing missiles for nearly six weeks. And the regime, battered and reconfigured under a new supreme leader, is still standing — now negotiating its own ceasefire terms through Pakistan. That is the baseline from which the endgame is now being negotiated.
The direction is clear. Trump’s ceasefire announcement points not toward a resumption of fighting but toward a negotiated end to the war. Trump himself said almost all points of contention have been agreed to. This is a two-week pause, not a permanent settlement — but the trajectory, and Trump’s own language, point toward a deal. Which means the window for achieving the objectives Netanyahu outlined on February 11 is closing, not opening. The missile program will not be destroyed. The regime will not fall. The enriched uranium will not be removed. The war is ending not with Iran’s capitulation but with its survival — and survival, for a regime that faced the full weight of American and Israeli military power, is a victory. And Israel had no say in that outcome.
Israel was not at the table when this ceasefire was made. The deal was brokered by Pakistan — not a traditional Middle East mediator and notably not a country with any particular sensitivity to Israeli interests. Trump accepted the framework over the explicit objections of Netanyahu, who had pushed for no deal without major Iranian concessions. This is what being a junior partner looks like. Israel can strike targets, degrade capabilities, and shape the battlefield. But when Washington decides it wants a deal, Jerusalem doesn’t set the terms. Trump chose the Strait of Hormuz — and the economic relief that comes with reopening it — over Israel’s strategic objectives. That choice reveals the hierarchy clearly.
Trump’s decision to send Vance to Islamabad rather than Kushner or Witkoff isn’t a procedural detail. It’s a signal. He wants a deal, and he’s willing to make concessions to get one. Tehran will price that desperation accordingly.
The question Israel now has to sit with is not whether this ceasefire holds. It’s what comes after the two weeks. If a permanent deal is reached that leaves Iran’s nuclear program intact, Israel will have participated in a war that made its strategic situation worse — more Iranian uranium in hardened facilities, a regime with a martyrdom narrative, and a precedent that American military commitment has a price and a ceiling.
Lebanon makes the hierarchy explicit. Netanyahu initially insisted the ceasefire did not include Lebanon and launched Israel’s largest strikes on Beirut since the war began, killing over 250 people. Trump called him the next day and asked him to scale back. Netanyahu then announced direct negotiations with Lebanon — not because Israel decided to, but because the White House needed him to stop threatening the Iran talks. The first meeting will take place at the State Department in Washington. That’s not Israel setting its own terms. That’s Israel being managed by Washington in real time.
For Netanyahu, the ceasefire is a personal and political reckoning. He pushed for this war, shaped its objectives, and sold Trump on the promise of decisive victory. He launched it in an election year, in part to distance himself from the catastrophic failures of October 7. The gamble was that decisive victory over Iran would rewrite the political narrative. There was no decisive victory and Israelis know it. He also bet Israel’s American relationship on the Republican Party — a bet that is visibly failing at the moment Israel needs American public support most.
None of this means Iran emerges in a position of strength. The regime is economically crippled, deeply unpopular, and structurally fractured. Reports based on American and Israeli intelligence suggest the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is unconscious and receiving medical treatment in Qom, unable to participate in decision-making. The IRGC appears to be the real power now — a hardline military apparatus running a state without functioning civilian leadership. The Islamic Republic survived, but what exactly survived, and in what form, remains an open question.
What is not unclear is what Iran prevented. It prevented the destruction of its nuclear program. It prevented regime change on American and Israeli terms. It prevented a ceasefire that required major concessions before the shooting stopped. On the things that mattered most to its survival, it held. What it may have secured in the process is still being disputed.
Iran released a ten-point proposal that reportedly includes American acceptance of Iranian uranium enrichment. Trump has denied this. That gap — between what Tehran says it secured and what Washington says it agreed to — is not a footnote. It is the central question of whether this ceasefire leads to a durable agreement or collapses in two weeks into something worse. If Iran believes it was promised enrichment rights and Trump walks that back, the fragile architecture of this deal falls apart. If Trump accepted enrichment and is concealing it, the stated objective of preventing an Iranian nuclear capability was abandoned at the negotiating table.
Either way, Israel is watching from the outside.
Negotiations begin Friday in Islamabad. Trump has made clear he wants a deal — publicly, repeatedly, in the maximalist language he uses when he has already decided. That transparency is a liability at the table. Iran’s negotiators know what Trump needs politically: a win, a headline, an end to oil price spikes and market volatility. Tehran will price that desperation accordingly. The ten-point proposal may be the opening position of a party that knows it holds leverage, not the final terms of a settlement.
And then there is the question no one in Jerusalem wants to ask aloud. This war was fought with the most pro-Israel American president in memory, with full US military backing, unlimited political cover, and Trump’s personal investment in the outcome. If this is what that combination produced — a ceasefire that leaves Iran’s nuclear program intact, its regime standing, and Israel sidelined from the final deal — what does the next round look like?
Iran now knows something it didn’t know before. It can absorb American and Israeli strikes, close the Strait, impose real economic costs, and negotiate its way to survival. That lesson has a long shelf life. The next time Israel faces an Iranian nuclear threshold, it may face it with a different president, different political conditions, and without the appetite for another round that this one has likely exhausted.
Iran’s bar for victory was survival. It survived. That’s the story of this ceasefire.
