Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on 11 February was anything but routine: the Israeli prime minister was rushed past reporters and into the Situation Room, a sanctuary so restricted that only a handful of foreign leaders have ever been allowed through its doors.
Inside, he pressed the case for war with Iran.
As The New York Times reported, Mr Netanyahu’s pitch centred on four goals: eliminating Iran’s leadership, crippling its missile programme, sparking a popular uprising, and ultimately delivering regime change.
The CIA director dismissed the regime-change premise as “farcical”.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned of the danger that Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, offering what amounted to the clearest assessment in the room, said a popular uprising was not realistic.
But he suggested that destroying Iran’s missile programme was within reach.
What followed undercut those expectations. The Supreme Leader may have been killed. But his son took over – and the regime survived. No popular uprising materialised. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, throttling a fifth of the world’s oil supply and sending shockwaves through the global economy.
Even Mr Rubio’s narrower objective has not been achieved.
Donald Trump meets Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 11 February (Pic: ‘AVI OHAYON/GPO/HANDOUT’)
US intelligence now assesses that Iran still holds roughly 70% of its missile stockpile – and retains the ability to launch them at long range.
Last week, Iran fired about 10 ballistic missiles at northern Israel and also struck at US military assets in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.
Throughout the war, officials say, the harm done to American military infrastructure was far greater than Washington has publicly acknowledged.
Across US bases in the region, more than 200 structures were damaged or destroyed – including runways, hangars, radar systems and command headquarters – with repairs estimated at up to $5 billion.
At the same time, Iran has come out of the conflict in a stronger economic position than when it went in. By closing the strait and pushing oil prices higher, Tehran earned more from oil sales during the war than before it, even as it exported less.
And this week’s outcome, after more than 100 days of fighting, falls well short of a settled peace: it is a memorandum of understanding, just 14 paragraphs of largely provisional commitments that give both sides 60 days to negotiate something more durable.
The toughest issues were left for later. The memorandum does not mention Iran’s missile programme and does not tackle Hezbollah or Iran’s web of regional proxies – unless, as Vice President JD Vance has argued, Paragraph 1’s pledge to “peace and stability on all fronts” is read as an implicit demand that Iran stop financing them.
Tehran, of course, may interpret that line differently.
People ride motorcycles past a large billboard showing portraits of Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L) and slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) in central Tehran
What’s more, the war not only failed to eliminate the missile programme – this week, Mr Trump explicitly backed Iran’s right to possess one.
“I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little unfair for them not to have some,” Mr Trump said.
On Iran’s nuclear programme, the text is more specific. Yet if the conflict was supposed to force Tehran into deeper concessions, the opposite appears to have happened.
In February, talks in Geneva produced an Iranian offer to significantly constrain its nuclear activities: limiting enrichment, accepting international inspectors, and proposing to dilute, or blend down, its most dangerous stockpile of enriched uranium on site.
This week’s memorandum includes no agreed cap on enrichment. Paragraph 8 commits only to “discuss the issue of enrichment” as part of a final deal that still has to be negotiated.
And although the language points toward Tehran “downblending” or diluting its uranium stockpile, the key details – the how, the when, and the how much – are all postponed to future talks.
The document also commits in principle to a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, though the source of the money, the mechanism for delivering it, and the timeline are entirely unspecified. For all the headlines that figure drew, it amounts less to a blank cheque than to a promise of a promise.
Mr Trump, as ever, addressed the number forcefully. “There is no 300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
He also cast the agreement as an outright win: “All there is for the U.S. is Success, Lower Oil Prices, and Victory. Check out the Stock Market.”
Damage due to an airstrike in a neighbourhood in Tehran in March
But the memorandum’s most concrete moves are immediate – and they benefit Iran the moment the ink dried.
Tehran can now sell its oil and collect the proceeds: waivers on sanctions covering crude exports, banking, transport and insurance have all taken effect at once.
The US naval blockade has been lifted, and millions of barrels of oil have already moved through the Strait of Hormuz.
Crucially, the memorandum’s Strait of Hormuz provisions appear to legitimise Iranian control rather than restore guaranteed open passage.
Paragraph 5 promises toll-free transit through the vital waterway for only 60 days. After that, the text offers no specifics, and it explicitly assigns Iran the role of negotiating the strait’s “future administration” with Oman and other Gulf states.
Put plainly, Iran seems to have gained a lasting, structural form of leverage it did not previously enjoy – because the war showed Tehran it could shut the world’s most important oil chokepoint at will.
For Washington, it is not the picture of a war won.
Israel, too, is left with little to celebrate.
Mr Netanyahu was the architect of the war – the leader who entered the Situation Room and persuaded Donald Trump to fight it.
Yet when the negotiations that ended the conflict took place, he was absent: not in the room, not on the phone, not consulted.
The memorandum produced by those talks binds Israel in its opening paragraph to an immediate and permanent end to military operations – on all fronts, including Lebanon.
For Mr Netanyahu, the political cost is severe. With elections expected this autumn, his survival depends on convincing voters he will not pull Israeli forces out of Lebanon.
His cabinet has openly rebelled.
“Trump’s agreement does not bind us,” said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has urged the prime minister to push even further.
US Vice President JD Vance speaking to reporters at the White House
That pressure triggered an unusually blunt public rebuke from the US vice president.
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government,” Mr Vance said on Thursday, “I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
The warning points to more than frayed patience.
US intelligence agencies have cautioned that Israel is likely to try to undercut efforts to reach a lasting peace deal.
The technical talks that were due to begin in Switzerland yesterday have already been delayed, thanks to Israel’s actions in Lebanon.
And although a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has since been announced, Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly shown a willingness to test the limits of what Washington will accept.
None of that alters the central fact: Iran endured long enough to make continuing the war politically and economically unbearable.
This deal was not signed because it was good – it was signed because there was no alternative.
