U.S. intelligence agencies told the Trump administration they feared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take steps that could damage President Donald Trump’s efforts to reach a peace agreement with Iran, according to a Friday report in The Washington Post. The assessment said any such move would likely come from the Lebanese front and would also be driven by domestic political pressure in Israel.
The report said Israeli intelligence believes Israel is determined to keep up military operations against Hezbollah, which could threaten a central part of the emerging U.S.-Iran arrangement, described as appearing in the first clause of the memorandum of understanding. The paper said Netanyahu’s moves were tied to Israel’s approaching election campaign, and that one goal was to show voters he would force the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon.
An unnamed American official familiar with the intelligence report said Netanyahu was determined to escalate the fighting against Hezbollah. In a separate Axios interview, Trump said he believed he could stop Israel from attacking Lebanon. “They have a lot of respect for me and they will do what I say,” he said.
Netanyahu reinforced the message in a speech the day before at a Bible Trail inauguration ceremony. He said Israel must preserve the security zone in southern Lebanon and would not pull out as long as security needs required it, which he tied to Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani River. He said Israel had pushed the ground invasion threat away from its communities and broken Hezbollah’s missile power, but added that “the struggle is not over” and that Israel would continue to ensure Iran never gets nuclear weapons.
