The news of a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran has set-off a huge political backlash in Israel. The interim deal that will be formally inked on June 19 at Switzerland, aimed at ending current hostilities and paving the way for 60-days of talks to negotiate a final agreement, is largely seen as a major strategic setback for Israel.

The “Together” party chairman and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, who leads the principal opposition front along with former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, in a press meet on Monday termed the US-Iran MoU as Netanyahu government’s historic failure against Iran.

Yair Lapid blasted the interim deal to be “one of the most shocking failures in Israel’s foreign and security policy entirely registered in Netanyahu’s name.”   Yair Golan, the centre-left party leader and former Israeli general, posted on X “Trump signs an agreement that funnels billions to the Ayatollahs’ regime, leaves the nuclear infrastructure intact, preserves the ballistic threat as is, and throws a lifeline to the murderous regime in Tehran”.   Former Prime Minister and a challenger to Netanyahu Ehud Barak said in an interview with Israel’s public broadcaster Monday “Israel is paying the price of Netanyahu’s hubris and blindness, and the price of the manipulations that he tried to pull on Trump. Iran emerged stronger; Israel emerged weaker. That is Netanyahu’s strategic responsibility. He failed.” Even members of Netanyahu-led ruling alliance are extremely miffed and concerned for the political fallout. The Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejected the deal, saying Israel was not bound by it in any way. “We must not compromise on anything less than the dismantling of Hezbollah,” Ben-Gvir, wrote on X.   Failure to trigger a regime change in Iran It was assumed that the Feb 28 US-Israeli military operation would be powerful enough to trigger a regime change in Iran, given the widespread Iranian protests in December and January.   For decades, Netanyahu had made removal of the Islamic Republic in Iran a key rallying point in his political career. He is believed to have convinced Trump on this with Israeli intelligence input. After eliminating the Supreme Leader and dozens of key Iranian officials on day one of the military operation, in a video address US President Donald Trump appealed Iranians to seize the opportunity and overthrow the government. Effort was made to foment an armed uprising with the aid of Iranian Kurdish separatists. Now, the US-Iran MOU legitimises the same Islamic regime it had set out to obliterate, strengthening it as never before with massive reconstruction fund and sweeping sanction relief. On Monday during a press meet when asked the reason for his failure to bring about collapse of the Iranian regime, Netanyahu angrily retorted back that “regime change” was never his stated goal. But it is very unlikely that the Iranian public will buy his arguments now, contradicting his own political stance for decades.   The Israeli opposition has begun cashing on this, widely perceived as a major security and strategic failure of Benjamin Netanyahu who leads the most-right wing alliance ever and voted on the promise of degrading the Iranian regime & its axis. “The clock for regime change in Iran will start as soon as the government in Israel is changed”, former Israeli Prime Minister Natali Bennet said on Monday who heads the key opposition ‘Together” party emerging as the frontrunner in most recent opinion polls. "In the face of the Iranian axis of evil - we will renew with all our might the "octopus doctrine" that we began to implement in the government headed by me. On the one hand, we prevent Iran from going nuclear, and on the other hand, we accelerate the collapse of the regime with political, economic, technological and military tools.”, Bennet said.   Little impact on Iranian Missile and Nuclear capabilities At the Monday press meet Netanyahu brushing aside the failure to cause “regime change” in Iran, claimed to have saved Israel from an imminent “nuclear annihilation”. The key objectives of the US-Israeli operation have been achieved; we have removed the “nuclear danger” and the “ballistic missile danger” from Iran, Netanyahu claimed. He said Israel was much safer now than it was on October 7 2023 when Hamas launched the carnage. But lamented that there was an organized, systematic effort to minimize these enormous achievements, to avoid showing that Israel is emerging renewed, strong and steadfast. However, most expert assessments seem to differ. A CNN investigation last month found that Iran has successfully replenished its missile capabilities post the 38-days intense strike by US and Israel.  CNN found that Iran has now unblocked 50 out of the 69 tunnel entrances struck by the US and Israel at 18 underground missile facilities. Experts believe Iran still has thousands of missiles in its underground missile sites and is fast rebuilding the destroyed missile factories and supply chain. According to experts, Iran’s missile stockpile buried hundreds of metres beneath the surface, is unlikely to have sustained much damage from strikes at ground level, given that the US and Israeli military struck tunnel entrances. For decades, Iran has been building numerous sophisticated underground missile cities beneath mountains and deserts in almost all provinces and cities. This is why Netanyahu wanted the US-Israeli strike on Iran to continue for long. Beyond political rhetoric, he knows well Iran’s missile capabilities remains largely intact and now the US-Iran MOU ending the war would give them enough room to accelerate the program further.   On Iran’s nuclear status, details trickling in of the MOU is giving strong indication that the issue of enrichment will be negotiated at a later stage with Iran making it clear that under no circumstance the enriched uranium would be allowed to be taken out of the country.   Strategic windfall for Iran The US-Israeli strike has handed over Iran two very significant point of leverage – the strait of Hormuz and the vulnerability of the Gulf States, United States’s key allies in the region hosting US military bases. Given that it has successfully used this pressure points to manoeuvre the United States and choke the global economy, its strategic strength has grown manyfold as compared to the beginning of the war. The resilience of the Iranian people in the face of a massive attack by two of world’s most powerful military, sustaining 38-days of brutal aerial campaign and hitting back as never expected has added a new strategic depth to the deterrence framework of Iran.    The MOU widely speculated to include immediate sanction relief on sale of Iranian oil, unfreezing of Iranian assets frozen in foreign banks and a reconstruction fund of 300 billion dollar will be seen as a disproportionate trade-off to desperately exit a conflict inflicting enormous cost on the United States.   The whole military campaign and the interim peace deal is seen a windfall for Iran and a strategic defeat for the Israel.   The opinion polls in Israel According to the latest weekly poll published on Friday by Hebrew-language daily Maariv, the Netanyahu-led Likud party is dropping by three seats to just 22. To form a government in Israel, a party or coalition must secure at least 61 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament Knesset. This is Likud Party’s lowest figure since August 2025, when it received 21 seats in a Maariv poll. However, the Netanyahu-led 5 party ruling coalition bloc maintained its strength from last week at 50 seats. The Zionist opposition bloc remained at 60 seats, and the Arab parties received an additional 10 seats. In the opposition, Gadi Eisenkot’s strengthening trend continued, with his party Yashar! jumping three seats this week to a record 20. Conversely, the Together party, led by Naftali Bennett, fell by two seats to 21. In effect, a three-way race has emerged for the title of the largest party among Likud, Together, and Yashar! In a bloc-based distribution, the coalition wins 53 seats and the opposition 67. However, the opposition bloc also includes 11 seats from the Arab parties. This means that the non-Arab opposition parties only reach 56 seats, so they alone will still have difficulty forming a government.   The road ahead for Netanyahu  Netanyahu’s approval rating has plunged almost 30% since the Feb 28 Iran war.  A Channel 12 poll in first week of June found only 32% approving Netanyahu to retain the premiership while 58 percent of respondents saying another candidate should be the premier. Polls after signing of the US-Iran MOU could be catastrophic for Netanyahu. However, his military campaign in Lebanon is expected to be the make-or-break outcome. He can undo some of the damages from the Iran front if he is successful in containing the Hizbollah and holding on to the southern Lebanon, now under Israeli occupation. To succeed in Lebanon, he has to confront Trump as the MOU most likely includes an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Southern parts. He can’t anger Trump as his support is crucial for the upcoming election. On other front, his electoral prospects now very much hinge on the Northern Israel where his popularity has plummeted for failure to curtail the Hizbollah threat.     Election in Israel must be held by end of this October.