U.S. Intel: Netanyahu Will Undermine U.S.-Iran Peace Deal

America’s “most reliable ally” is turning out to be not so reliable.

Weeks ago, a Defense Intelligence Agency report deemed Israel’s espionage against the United States “critical,” and an official called that effort “unhinged.”

When U.S. President Donald Trump inked a peace deal with Iran to end the unnecessary war he started on Israel’s behalf — a deal that included ending Israeli military operations in Lebanon — top Israeli officials, notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately said they would continue fighting and would not abandon conquered territory.

Now, The Washington Post reported today, it’s official. The U.S. intelligence combine told President Trump that Netanyahu will torpedo the peace deal.

Possible Relationship Rupture

After a Hezbollah drone strike killed four Israeli soldiers, the Post noted, Israel clobbered southern Lebanon with airstrikes. After the attacks, Vice President J.D. Vance canceled his trip to Switzerland for negotiations with Iranian officials.

Trump, the Post continued, said Netanyahu needn’t “knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.”

But “the new U.S. intelligence report concludes that in the face of national elections this fall, Netanyahu’s political survival is linked to showing his domestic audience that he will not withdraw troops from Lebanon and that he is intent on escalating the fighting with Hezbollah, said one U.S. official familiar with the report,” the Post disclosed.

The report says Israel is unhappy with the memorandum of understanding that President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran have signed, because it harms Israel’s “broader objective of maintaining maximum pressure on Tehran, according to a current and former official.”

“The report conveys Israel’s perception that the agreement could constrain its ability to defend itself against Hezbollah, one former official said,” the newspaper continued:

Trump administration officials insist that the terms do not prevent Israel from retaliating against Hezbollah if fired upon and that Netanyahu’s concerns pale in comparison to the need to complete a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to stave off a global economic crisis.

The report reflected that any suspension of hostilities or withdrawal from Lebanon will be seen in Israel as a defeat for Netanyahu, said the current official. …

Fully 70 percent of Jewish Israelis support intensifying the fight against Hezbollah, according to a May poll by the Institute of National Security Studies, a leading Israeli think tank, and Israeli political analysts widely say that a military pullback would be interpreted by voters as a sign of defeat.

Trump Can Stop It

Former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Harrison Mann told the Post that “permanent war — and territorial expansion — have been the animating forces of Israeli politics for years.” Thus, Netanyahu must show that he is willing to wage more war than his political opponents.

But Mann also said Trump can easily stop Israel’s maniacal drive to annex southern Lebanon.

“The U.S. can cut off munitions, jet fuel and maintenance support, limiting the scope of any Israeli offensive, freeze critical intelligence sharing or withdraw U.S. forces currently deployed to project Israeli airspace, raising the cost of any Israeli war,” Mann told the Post.

In something of a droll observation, the Post explained that presidents “have largely avoided such actions.” Three Republican presidents have tried to control Israel by withholding military and monetary aid:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened Israel with sanctions if it didn’t remove troops from the Sinai Peninsula in 1956. President Ronald Reagan delayed the delivery of advanced F-16 fighter jets in 1981 in response to Israel’s surprise bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor. And President George H.W. Bush withheld housing loan guarantees in an effort to force Israel to stop building new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

“If you ask me, ‘Has an American president ever threatened to impose real costs and consequences on Israel in real time?’ the answer would be no,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations.

But if Iran does not constrain Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel, “I don’t care what Trump says, Netanyahu is going to respond,” he said.

Israel Won’t Stop

More likely, even if Iran does constrain Hezbollah, Israel will not retreat from what it calls “security zones” in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, as Netanyahu and other officials have repeatedly said.

Indeed, Netanyahu’s more voluble cabinet ministers are calling for and bragging about war crimes in southern Lebanon.

Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir openly called for destroying Lebanon.

“I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!” he wrote. He continued:

Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint — you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.

“We cannot stop demolishing houses in southern Lebanon,” Ben-Gvir said on June 17 when the memorandum of understanding that ended hostilities and opened the Strait of Hormuz went public:

We cannot stop. We cannot allow the residents of southern Lebanon to return.

Defense Minister Israel Katz bragged about displacing 200,000 residents of southern Lebanon and said they must never be allowed to return.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wants Israel to “speak with fire” and “open the gates of hell” in Lebanon.

On May 6, he openly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” he said.

On May 19, he said Israel is “destroying everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip.”

“The army is leaving no stone unturned,” he continued:

We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.

Occupying the so-called security zones is part of the Greater Israel Project, which envisions territory from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq as part of Israel.

Israel-First U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who thinks Israel created the United States, greenlit that plan during a disastrous interview with Tucker Carlson.

Said Huckabee, “It would be fine if they took it all.”