Vance told Israel it can't kill its way to security. He's right — but his Iran deal may have made the alternative impossible

Israel, according to JD Vance, is having a “freakout” over his Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. Of course it is, and that isn’t even remotely “odd,” as he suggests. Israelis are dismayed because the deal he negotiated over their heads feels like a betrayal and has forced them to confront a brutal dilemma: Should they abandon what they perceive as core security goals, or should they alienate an existentially important ally?.By Marc Champion.Vance’s MOU achieves none of the aims that the US or Israel had when they went to war, while offering substantial financial concessions to Iran. He can spin that as “a win for the American people,” as he did in a Thursday interview with the New York Times, because most Americans — rightly — never backed it and want it to end.But by including Lebanon in the ceasefire, the defeat the US vice president has inflicted on Israel is unspinnable. It implies the retreat of its troops, the return of Hezbollah flags and missiles to the border and a continued depopulation of Israel’s north. None of this was planned for in Vance’s skeletal MOU because Israel wasn’t present and he doesn’t appear to have been interested.This has put the fate of the ceasefire, and possibly the US midterm elections and Vance’s own presidential ambitions, in the hands of Israel — and it isn’t yet clear what path Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will take. Already, Iran cancelled a planned Friday meeting with the vice president in Geneva, citing Lebanon. In his interview, Vance seemed to be having a freakout of his own, warning Israel’s leaders against alienating a critical arms supplier and their only remaining powerful friend in the world.Then came the zinger: “You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.” That there is truth to this does nothing to detract from Israel’s predicament.On Feb. 28, the day the US and its ally went to war with Iran, Israel had seemed on the cusp of crushing its enemies across the region. The war that Netanyahu urged a willing President Donald Trump to join was meant to complete this all-military, two-and-a-half-year drive to secure, once and for all, the future of the world’s only Jewish state — not to mention his own political fortunes.Most Israelis, incensed by Hamas’s atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, were willing to back Netanyahu’s fist-first policy, regardless of international opprobrium. And for a while it seemed to be working. Not only was Hamas crushed as a military threat, but Hezbollah was severely weakened and Iran humiliated, its air-defense systems shredded. Then came the war to end it all by taking out the regime in Iran, a fight Trump has been advocating since the 1980s.But Netanyahu has embarked on a series of military campaigns without a political track to turn battlefield wins into strategic ones. With or without the US, this rolling campaign was always going to hit a wall. The overreach in Iran simply brought that moment forward.Having a political plan is essential, no matter how good your military, because for there to be no Hamas, you need either no Palestinians or a realistic path to solving their grievances. Whether you find those grievances justifiable is immaterial. The same goes for how you deal with Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shiites from whom its ranks are drawn. Still more so Iran, with its long history, 90 million-plus population, and decades of preparation for just such an attack. The other side always gets a vote.A genuine change of regime in Tehran might have been transformative, but it was never going to happen through airpower alone and Trump had no plan B. Netanyahu was, in effect, inviting the US to join him in supersizing Israel’s decades old “mowing-the-lawn” approach to containing threats from Hamas and Hezbollah, and apply it to Iran. This was implausible for several reasons.First, for Trump’s domestic political constituency foremost, mowing the lawn spells “forever war.” Second, Iran is not Hamas or Hezbollah. Israel can’t succeed alone, and the cost to the US of repeatedly conducting the exercise of recent months would drain its resources at a rate that simply doesn’t make sense for the US — let alone its Gulf allies, the targets of Iranian retaliation.Above all, Iran has since February acquired a deterrent far more effective than its ballistic missiles: The newly acquired ability to disrupt the global economy at will by blocking the Strait of Hormuz oil route.This setback is a reality check. It should be used to develop a more three-dimensional approach to the all-too-genuine threats that Israel faces.Israelis will have the chance to elect a new government by October, opening the way to new ideas about how to improve their long-term security. For now, opposition leaders are making the most of Netanyahu’s humiliation by outflanking him to his hawkish right, promising to “finish the job” in Lebanon. But once in office, reality will hit home: There is no finishing the job. Israel cannot change its geography, the IDF cannot fight in perpetuity and all Netanyahu’s military campaigns remain unfinished.Hamas is no longer a military threat, but it remains alive and in charge of those parts of Gaza that the IDF hasn’t occupied. The West Bank is on fire, though not yet in a state of war. Hezbollah and Iran have been weakened militarily, but they survive and have been emboldened by their success in thwarting the combined firepower of the US and Israel.In the short term, Israel can impose its will by force alone, but looking further out demands a political strategy that can reduce the threats without war. That will never be easy given the ascendancy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the fanaticism of Hamas and Hezbollah, but Israel has potential partners in the attempt to drain their support..Read more:.US and Iran reach ceasefire deal to reopen Strait of Hormuz.The Lebanese state wants Hezbollah reined in, too, and Israel-Lebanon talks are underway under US duress. Peace is also a threat to the IRGC, which before February’s US-Israeli attack had faced a population in revolt over the regime’s economic failures, exacerbated by the obsessive prioritization of foreign military adventures. The Palestinians may have been further radicalized by Israel’s Gaza offensive and its aggressive West Bank settlements, but they’re sick of their leaders and in search of something new.Turning all of that into a more positive cycle will be a Herculean political, diplomatic and — at times — military task. But it has more chance of success than missiles alone..© 2026 Bloomberg L.P..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Vance told Israel it can't kill its way to security. He's right — but his Iran deal may have made the alternative impossible

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