America will survive the Iran War. It has survived worse. Israel may not be so fortunate. Superpowers can afford mistakes. Small countries living in dangerous neighbourhoods cannot.

People have been predicting the decline of American power since Vietnam. America lost in Vietnam, failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffered humiliation in Somalia. Yet the United States remains the world’s dominant military and financial power. Superpowers can absorb defeats. They possess strategic depth.

Of course, the same may not be said about individual politicians. Donald Trump has been seriously weakened inside and outside MAGA world. So have the Republican politicians who have hitched themselves to the Trumpian star.

But in the case of Israel, there is more at stake than a few right-wing security-minded politician. Israel is a country of fewer than ten million in a hostile region. Its security rests on three pillars: military superiority, American support and deterrence—the belief among its enemies that resistance is futile.

If the Iran War has weakened any of those pillars, the consequences for Israel are potentially much greater than for the United States. America’s allies may doubt Washington’s judgment, but they are unlikely to abandon the dollar or NATO. Israel, by contrast faces increased diplomatic isolation; reduced confidence in US support; strengthened adversaries convinced that Israel’s power has limits; domestic political divisions and—most important of all—the end of the aura of invincibility that has been central to Israeli strategy since 1967.

In  Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu thought he had found a kindred spirit who believed in solving problems through the barrel of a gun with a few dollars thrown in for good measure. In Gaza he humbled Hamas with American help. It cost 73,000 Palestinian lives and a great deal of international support. Americans, for the first time, began to question their unquestioning support for Israel.

Netanyahu saw success in Gaza as an opportunity to re-draw the political map of the Middle East in Israel’s favour. This meant developing his growing special relationship with Trump to eliminate the primary source of anti-Israeli sentiment—the theocratic regime in Iran.

For 34 years Netanyahu  had been urging American presidents to join Israel in attacking Iran in order to stop it acquiring a nuclear bomb. Until Trump came along his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Then came the “bunker-busting” bombs of June 2025 that were supposed to have“utterly destroyed” Iran’s bomb-making capabilities. That was obviously false because on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint bombing campaign designed to topple the Iranian regime and end the country’s nuclear ambitions one and for all.

The regime has not fallen. The MOU signed on Thursday  pledged Iran to end its nuclear programme, but no one believes it will honour that promise. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost. The Iranians have discovered a new political lever by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Billions have been wasted in missiles. Hundreds of billions of dollars has been lost to the world economy.

Trump had been told by Netanyahu that the Iranian regime would collapse like a house of cards. It was another Venezuela. The people were so angry with the regime that the moment American and Israeli bombs started to fall, they would rise up and overthrow the mullahs.

It did not happen. The mullahs clung to power and held the world to ransom by closing the Strait of Hormuz and ending the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Trump was faced with the prospect of another “forever war” in the Middle East along with rising oil prices only months before the mid-term elections. He pulled the plug on the war and Netanyahu. Not surprisingly, the result has been a series of expletive-loaded conversations between the Israeli and American leaders.

Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has insisted that “Trump’s agreement does not bind us. We are not parties to this agreement that does not ensure our security.”

But the first of fourteen points  in the Memorandum of Understanding, is an “end to fighting on all fronts”—including Lebanon. The first point goes on to stress that both sides will ensure that “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon is respected.”

Netanyahu insists that Israel will retain its buffer zone in southern Lebanon and continue to do whatever is necessary to guarantee the country’s security. But the hard truth is that security cannot be guaranteed by buffer zones, bunker-busting bombs or even American presidents. It rests on deterrence, alliances and the belief among Israel’s enemies that resistance is hopeless.

Those pillars have been weakened. America will recover. It always does. It has the size, wealth and strategic depth to absorb even serious mistakes. Israel does not. Benjamin Netanyahu entered the Iran War dreaming of remaking the Middle East. Instead, he may have succeeded in remaking Israel—and not for the better.

For the first time since 1948, Israelis are being forced to contemplate an uncomfortable possibility: that military superiority and American support are not enough; that their enemies can survive and adapt; and that the greatest threat to the Jewish state may not come from Tehran, Gaza or southern Lebanon, but from the illusion that force alone can secure a lasting peace.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”