Trump’s taunting of Netanyahu is a warning: a local enforcer cannot deny the boss

The most consequential relationship in the Middle East has entered uncharted territory. Israel is deeply disappointed by what it has heard about the US-Iran negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a peace deal with Iran that allows it to retain its nuclear capabilities. He continues to bomb Lebanon despite Donald Trump ordering him to stop. If disappointment turns to defiance of US wishes, Israel may learn a harsh lesson in realpolitik: a local enforcer cannot defy the boss.

The Memorandum of Understanding that Iran and the US will sign in Geneva on Friday formalises a ceasefire and kicks off 60 days of negotiations. The agreement could well be renewed at the end of the 60 days, perhaps many times without a final deal. It achieves Trump’s core goal – lower petrol prices before the midterm elections because the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened. The US president sees this deal as his hard-won, signature accomplishment. He is in no mood to tolerate Israel undermining it. Iran’s foreign minister says that further Israeli strikes in Lebanon would do just that.

But Netanyahu, who faces an election as soon as October, is under intense pressure from within his governing coalition to resist the deal. This coalition includes far-right cabinet figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose ideological views run contrary to their country’s strategic realities. They would prefer that Netanyahu tells the US that Israel is a sovereign country that will act as it wishes, regardless of Washington’s directives. They are deeply mistaken.

Netanyahu’s goal was “to remove the existential threats” to Israel. That meant destroying Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the end of its ballistic missile program, and the end of Iran’s support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. None of these goals has been met.

Israel cannot attack Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own. Iran’s main nuclear facilities are more than 1500 kilometres away. Flying there and back would involve the whole of Israel’s aerial refuelling capability, and allows little or no room for operational errors. Iran has rebuilt its air defences, meaning that Israeli bombers would require protection by fighter jets. Israel would have to act on its own to put together a strike package totalling about 100 aircraft, which means potentially risking almost a third of its 350-odd combat-capable aircraft. Even then, only one conventional weapon can plausibly destroy Iran’s fortified stockpile – the precision-guided GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It is