The Email Bibi Should Send to Donald

Dear Donald,

I write to you as a friend — one who has stood beside you through the most consequential decisions of our era, and who values that friendship above the calculations of any single moment.

First, let me say what I have said publicly and what I mean with complete sincerity: the support you provided Israel at the outset of our engagement against Iran was historic. Your willingness to stand with us when others flinched — to provide materiel, intelligence, and above all the moral clarity of American backing — reflected the best of the alliance our two nations have built across decades. For that, I am and will remain grateful.

It is precisely because of that friendship that I must speak plainly now.

We began this engagement together with mutually understood objectives. Iran’s nuclear program was to be dismantled — not managed, not frozen, not subjected to another 60-day negotiating clock that Tehran has proven, across three administrations, it can manipulate indefinitely. The Strait of Hormuz was to be opened, yes — but on terms that did not reward the regime that mined it. The security architecture of our region was to emerge from this conflict fundamentally altered, not merely rearranged.

What has been agreed and now read aloud to reporters is something else entirely.

The MOU your administration has concluded with the Islamic Republic does not dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. It freezes the current status quo — a status quo that includes enriched stockpiles — while committing to 60 days of negotiations extendable by mutual consent, a timeline Iran’s negotiators will treat as a runway. It waives sanctions and unfreezes assets immediately, providing the regime with the economic oxygen it needs to reconstitute. It commits the United States and regional partners to $300 billion in reconstruction and economic development for Iran — a figure that would, under any reasonable analysis, underwrite the very military and proxy infrastructure we spent the last months degrading. And it declares the war terminated on all fronts, including Lebanon, on terms that restore Iran’s strategic position faster than any military defeat could.

I understand the domestic pressures you face. I read the commentary about gasoline prices, and I am not without sympathy for the political realities of the American electorate. But I would gently suggest that the savings at the pump — should the Strait fully reopen under these terms — will be measured in cents and months, while the strategic cost will be measured in years and in the security of every American ally from Riyadh to Jerusalem.

Israel does not and cannot accept the terms of this MOU as binding upon us. We did not sign it. We were not consulted in its final form. And the provisions declaring a permanent termination of military operations on all fronts speak to commitments Israel has not made.

Let me be direct in the way that friends must sometimes be direct: Israel will take whatever action our security requires against adversaries who have declared and demonstrated their intention to destroy us. This is not defiance of America — it is the same principle that led your country to respond after Pearl Harbor without asking the world’s permission, and which every sovereign nation exercises as its most basic right. We will, as always, coordinate and communicate with Washington. But we will act.

I regret the manner of this moment as much as its substance. After what we fought through together, Israel deserved a conversation before a press briefing.

With respect, with friendship, and with the candor that genuine friendship requires,

Bibi