Lapid Blasts Netanyahu Over Emerging U.S.-Iran Deal, Calls It a Historic Failure

Opposition leader Yair Lapid launched an unusually harsh attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, following reports about the terms of a developing agreement between the United States and Iran. Lapid said he still hoped the reports were wrong, but added that if they were true, it would be “one of the most shocking failures” in Israel’s foreign and security policy, and blamed Netanyahu personally.

Lapid presented what he described as 13 major strategic failures. He accused Netanyahu of selling Washington an overly optimistic picture during the war, failing to outline the risks, and losing American trust in the middle of the fighting. He also said the prime minister handled diplomacy amateurishly by not assembling a professional team to work with isolationist elements in the U.S. administration.

The opposition leader said Netanyahu did not persuade the Americans to strike Iran’s oil and energy facilities, ignored the effect of rising oil prices in the United States ahead of congressional elections, and failed to secure the inclusion of Iran’s ballistic missile program in the agreement or even in the talks. He also criticized the expected lifting of sanctions and the flow of tens of billions of dollars into the Iranian economy under Islamic Revolutionary Guard supervision.

Lapid extended the criticism to regional issues, including the Strait of Hormuz, the possible closure of which, he said, was raised before the war but never seriously discussed in the cabinet. He said Netanyahu failed to consider strikes on Gulf energy sites, did not use ties with Gulf states to create joint action against Iran, mishandled the Kurdish issue without accounting for Turkish retaliation and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s influence in Washington, and appointed too low-level a team for talks with Lebanon, causing the government to take over the Lebanese file. He also said Netanyahu failed to rally world opinion and mismanaged internal decision-making by repeatedly changing security chiefs during the war while keeping Ron Dermer as adviser. Lapid ended by saying Netanyahu’s claim that he had “changed the Middle East” had, because of negligence and arrogance, changed it for the worse, and promised, “We can fix it, we need to fix it, Netanyahu can no longer fix it, we will do it.”