Netanyahu speaks after three months, opposition slams him
In his first address to reporters in three months, the Israeli prime minister avoided criticising the US-Iran deal, while the opposition accused him of the greatest strategic failure in the country's history.
- Netanyahu held his first press conference in three months and avoided criticising the US-Iran deal.
- Democrats leader Yair Golan called the agreement the greatest strategic failure in Israel's history.
- Ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich said Israel is not bound by the deal.
- Israel will remain in security zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, the prime minister said.
For Belgrade, which has spent years balancing its Western partners against its own calculations in the Middle East, what was heard from Jerusalem on the evening of June 15 is more than an internal Israeli affair. A deal between Washington and Tehran reshapes the geopolitical reality in which both Serbian diplomacy and Serbian energy policy operate, because every new balance of power in the region feeds into oil prices and into the transatlantic link that Brussels watches so closely. That is precisely why the Israeli prime minister’s address, his first after three months of silence before reporters, carried a weight no one had expected at the start of the day.
Benjamin Netanyahu stepped before the cameras in the evening hours and, instead of the anticipated condemnation of the agreement between the United States and Iran, chose a cautious line. He did not criticise the deal outright, arguing instead that it actually delivers the goals of the war Israel is waging. “We saved the State of Israel from the threat of nuclear destruction,” the prime minister declared, framing the agreement as an indirect result of Israeli pressure rather than a concession from Washington to Tehran.
In the same address, Netanyahu stressed that Israeli forces would remain in security zones in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria for as long as necessary. With that, he tried to defend two seemingly contradictory positions: that the agreement is acceptable, and that Israel retains full military autonomy on the ground. The defence minister reinforced that message, stating that Israeli forces would stay in Lebanon indefinitely, a sign that Jerusalem has no intention of turning a diplomatic deal into a withdrawal.
Why does the opposition speak of the greatest failure in history?
The opposition’s reaction was sharper than the agreement itself. Democrats leader Yair Golan described the deal as the greatest strategic failure in Israel’s history and accused the prime minister of building a false sense of security for years. “For years he sold the public a false image of Mr Security,” Golan said of Netanyahu, adding that replacing the prime minister had become a security imperative. Former minister Benny Gantz was somewhat more measured but no softer in substance: he called the deal a strategic failure with long-term consequences that Israel would, he said, pay for through diplomatic, military and legal means.
What makes this episode especially complicated is that the criticism comes not only from the opposition benches but from within the governing coalition itself. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly declared that Israel is not bound by the agreement. Ben Gvir stressed that his country is not subordinate to the United States and remains sovereign in its decisions, while Smotrich judged the deal bad for Israel and for the entire free world. When ministers from the prime minister’s own government reject a deal the prime minister defends, the unity of the coalition itself comes into question.
What does this mean for Washington-Jerusalem relations?
From a European perspective, and indirectly for Serbia, the most important question is how the diplomatic channel between Washington and Jerusalem will hold in the weeks ahead. A deal with Iran has been a red line of Israeli foreign policy for decades, and now the prime minister is forced to present it as a victory even as part of his own government tells him otherwise. The EU’s High Representative and the bloc’s key member states are weighing every word from Jerusalem, because any tectonic shift in the relationship between Israel and Iran also reshapes Israel’s approach to multilateralism and to the sanctions regime Brussels maintains.
Netanyahu’s calculation is clear: buy time, keep a military presence on the ground, and at the same time avoid an open clash with Washington. The question that remains before the Israeli voter, but also before observers in Belgrade and Brussels, is whether a prime minister can defend, for long, a deal that half his government rejects and the entire opposition calls a historic mistake. How do you read this move from Jerusalem, as a pragmatic victory or as an admission of defeat?
