For Israel, the value of any US-Iran agreement will not be judged by oil-market relief or by a White House eager to declare the war finished, stresses in today's editorial note The Jerusalem Post. The only meaningful measure is whether Tehran emerges weaker than before. Has its nuclear program been dismantled? Has its enriched uranium been removed? Have its missiles and drones been neutralized? Has Hezbollah been pushed back? Has Israel preserved its freedom to act? On each count, the answers remain unclear—and that uncertainty is cause for alarm.
Tellingly, the sharpest warnings are coming from President Donald Trump’s own camp: Iran hawks, pro-Israel conservatives, and lawmakers who backed the pressure campaign and the airstrikes in the belief that this moment could finally shift the regional balance against the Islamic Republic.
The Israeli newspaper adds that Senator Lindsey Graham declined to celebrate. A deal that leaves Iran able to menace the Strait of Hormuz and threaten Gulf oil infrastructure, he cautioned, would mark a major realignment of regional power and, over time, become a nightmare for Israel. His benchmark was explicit: no enrichment, American control of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, an open Strait of Hormuz, an end to Tehran’s long-range ballistic-missile program, and a halt to its sponsorship of terrorist proxies. He voiced deep skepticism that Iran would accept terms meaningfully tougher than the 2015 JCPOA. Senator Ted Cruz went further, warning that if Iran walks away still funded, still enriching, and still gripping leverage over Hormuz, the result would be a disastrous mistake.
The deeper danger is structural. Iran does not need to win a war—it only needs to survive one, retain its core capabilities, and persuade the world to mistake a pause for a breakthrough. That is precisely the pattern of 2015: the West read signatures as a turning point, while Tehran read them as time bought.
The reported sixty-day negotiation window is the most troubling element. Sixty days may sound orderly in Washington, but in the region it is ample time for Iran to relocate assets, rebuild confidence, recast the war domestically, and probe how badly the United States wants quiet. Iran and Hezbollah both know how to weaponize delay, and Israel has paid for such delays before.
Lebanon poses the most immediate risk. No arrangement that restrains Israel while leaving Hezbollah entrenched is acceptable. The security of Kiryat Shmona, Metula, and the Galilee cannot rest on the wording of a US-Iran memorandum; it requires Hezbollah to be moved, disarmed, and deterred.
Trump deserves credit for grasping the Iranian threat more clearly than many Western leaders—he abandoned the Obama deal, imposed sanctions, and supported Israel at decisive moments. That record makes the present stakes higher still. He should not attach his name to a weaker version of the very mistake he once condemned.
According to The Jerusalem Post, if the agreement genuinely removes Iran’s nuclear threat, severs its proxies, safeguards Israel’s freedom of action, and offers the regime no road back to strength, its terms should be published and defended. If it falls short, Israel should not applaud—and neither should Congress.