The number of articles published over the last week accusing Donald Trump of “betraying” Israel by signing an MoU and now entering negotiations with Iran deserves a serious conversation.
Not because criticism of the deal is illegitimate – there are real and troubling questions about what this agreement will mean for Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile arsenal, the fate of the highly enriched uranium, and the regime’s continued sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas.
Those concerns are justified. But the emotional reaction in Israel to what Trump has done reveals something deeper: an expectation that Trump’s actions regarding Iran were somehow about Israel.
It is as if everything Trump did over the past year and a half was understood through one lens and one lens only: Israel. It is as if none of it had to do with American national security, freedom of navigation, energy markets, regional stability, or the broader Western interest in preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. It was all supposedly done on behalf of one country and its 10 million citizens.
That is why the language being used now has become so overheated. Yediot Ahronot ran an op-ed titled “Trump betrayed Israel. Netanyahu must not blink.”
Israel Hayom published a piece under the headline, “You could have been the greatest president of all, but you failed.” On Channel 14, one of the leading anchors declared, “Trump betrayed the State of Israel. We won the war, and the US lost it.”
US prioritises its own interests
People are entitled to be angry about the deal and are entitled to believe that Trump stopped it prematurely and that the terms are too soft. But this sense of emotional betrayal – as if Trump owed Israel something and then broke a personal promise – is absurd. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how alliances work, and of how American presidents make decisions.
Former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman put it well in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week. He argued that while the deal may be bad, and while Israel will still need to do what is necessary to defend itself, there is no reason to come up with claims against the US.
Washington, he explained, acts according to American interests, not Israeli ones. That should be obvious. But in the current atmosphere, it is worth repeating.
This matters because it helps explain what happened over the course of the war. When the joint campaign began on February 28, the interests of Israel and the United States were aligned almost completely.
Both countries wanted to strike Iran hard, degrade its military, damage its missile program, and try to topple a regime that had spent years destabilizing the region while racing toward nuclear power.
Once Iran effectively weaponized the Strait of Hormuz, though, the interests diverged. Trump’s focus shifted, and his priority was no longer regime change or even the degradation of Iran’s military. It became about reopening Hormuz, stabilizing energy markets, and ending a conflict that was taking too long and was becoming more expensive than he had imagined at the outset.
That was the moment Israel should have recognized that the two countries were no longer operating under the same interests. It should have understood that there was a divergence and that the mission now needed to shift to preserve operational gains and minimize the strategic damage of an eventual American decision to stop.
Instead, Israel appears to have kept pushing for more strikes and to keep trying to weaken the regime. The problem was that Trump was no longer there. He was looking for an exit ramp.
This is what makes the Israeli handling of the last phase of the war so perplexing. Two weeks ago, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office were still trying to downplay the tension with Washington.
They insisted there was no real divide, that relations had not changed, and that any disagreements were technical rather than substantive. That is obviously not the case. Officials in Washington are now speaking openly about growing frustration and anger with the Israeli side.
None of this should have been hard to predict. Trump was never built for long, drawn-out military adventures. He likes quick operations, dramatic shows of force, and clean endings he can easily sell as victories. He is far more comfortable with a Venezuela-style in-and-out strike than with a protracted regional campaign.
The immediate challenge is obvious. Israel has to ensure that whatever emerges from the deal does not erode its operational freedom, particularly in Lebanon. It has to prevent a situation in which a ceasefire there is dictated by Iran and then enforced by Trump.
But there is also a larger strategic question, and it is one Israel should already be asking: what opportunities exist now, precisely because the war is winding down and because the US is looking for a new regional framework?
One obvious place to start is I2U2 – the forum that brings together India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.
Established after the Abraham Accords, I2U2 was supposed to serve as a platform for joint economic, energy, and infrastructure initiatives linking South Asia, the Gulf, and Israel.
It never fulfilled its promise. But now, after the Hormuz crisis underscored just how vulnerable the region’s trade routes remain, it needs to be urgently revived.
At the center of that effort should be IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor. The basic idea is straightforward: create a route for goods, energy, and commerce to move from India through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, into Israel, and from there to the Mediterranean and Europe.
In other words, reduce dependence on choke-points like the Hormuz by creating a new economic route through the region.
This is exactly the kind of initiative Israel should be championing right now. It would increase Israel’s value to the US and the Gulf not only as a military partner, but as a logistical and economic hub. It would allow Israel to say that its role in the region is not just about fighting wars, but also includes building the infrastructure of a more connected Middle East.
And yet, there is still no one in the Israeli government actually in charge of it. Ask around, and you will get a different answer depending on the ministry.
There is someone at the Foreign Ministry, someone at the Transportation Ministry, someone at the Defense Ministry, someone at the National Security Council. Everyone is involved, which in Israel usually means no one is in charge.
That matters because IMEC is a massive bureaucratic, legal, logistical, and diplomatic undertaking.
If rail cargo enters Israel from Jordan through the Jordan Valley, who handles customs? Who is responsible for security screening? How does the cargo reach the ports? What tax regime applies? What regulatory framework governs transit?
This requires a coordinator with the authority and mandate to bring the different ministries together, negotiate the bilateral and multilateral agreements that will be needed, and drive the project to execution.
There are other opportunities as well. Last year, the Azerbaijani company SOCAR bought a stake in Israel’s Tamar gas field, creating an important partnership linking Azerbaijan, the UAE, and Israel. Azerbaijan has long tried to play a mediating role between Israel and Turkey.
Before October 7, those efforts were beginning to bear fruit – Netanyahu met Erdogan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Herzog visited Ankara, and there were plans for additional high-level meetings in Asia in the weeks that followed.
Since October 7, of course, Israeli-Turkish relations have reached new lows, and while they might seem lost, there may also be room for de-escalation. Economic interests have a way of reopening doors, and Azerbaijan – because of its ties to both countries and stake in Israel’s strategic gas field – could be uniquely positioned to help lower the temperature and eventually rebuild some channel of communication.
These are only two examples, but they point to the larger lesson. Israel cannot remain trapped in the language of betrayal. It cannot spend the next six months nursing grievances over what Trump did or did not do. What Israel needs now is a plan to preserve its freedom of action and to use the new regional situation not only to fight better wars, but to create a stronger strategic position for the years ahead.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD Forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His latest book (with Amir Bohbot), While Israel Slept, is a bestseller in the United States.
