The latest truce between Israel and Lebanon, announced overnight Wednesday, came after Donald Trump blew up at Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him he was “f**king crazy” for continuing his war there.
The details of that call were leaked in what fans of professional wrestling – which Trump loves to watch – might instantly recognise as kayfabe, the term used to describe how a staged fight is presented as real. Importantly, wrestlers draw on real-life disagreements and genuine anger to fuel the performance. Trump was genuinely angry with Netanyahu. It also suited both men to have that fact known.
The limited ceasefire, which is contingent on “a complete cessation” of attacks by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, is another step in a series of carefully choreographed moves that Trump hopes will lead to a peace deal between the US and Iran.
Trump called Netanyahu on Monday to complain that his plans to bomb the Lebanese capital, Beirut, would destroy any chance of that deal. Tehran had threatened to pull out of negotiations in protest at Israel’s continued offensive against Hezbollah. “Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this,” Trump was quoted as saying. “What the f**k are you doing?”
Axios broke the story of the Trump-Netanyahu call. Trump himself confirmed what happened – in broad strokes, if not in all the expletive-riddled detail. Axios said Trump spoke about civilian casualties in Lebanon, where more than 3,400 people have been killed and 1.2 million people displaced. He reportedly objected to the Israelis destroying whole tower blocks to take out a single Hezbollah commander.
This concern might be real, or it could be Trump’s frustration in getting to a peace deal with Iran. After all, the US went along with exactly the same tactics in Gaza, where the Israeli magazine +972 reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would kill up to 100 civilians to target a single high-ranking Hamas official. The IDF denied this.
Giving his account of the conversation, Trump said he had complained about Netanyahu “constantly fighting” with Lebanon. Axios said that Trump also reminded Netanyahu of his long-running corruption trial. “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass.”
Netanyahu has played up his relationship with Trump to further his own goals (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)Netanyahu has regularly traded on his close working relationship with Trump – he has visited the Oval Office at least half a dozen times so far in Trump’s second term. But he also has a history of angering US presidents: it’s almost his political brand.
Bill Clinton asked after meeting him for the first time: “Who the f**k does he think he is? Who’s the f**king superpower here?”
Pausing the offensive in Lebanon at America’s request might have been politically impossible for Netanyahu without a very public row. He needs to show he is standing up for Israel in order to keep the right-wing politicians in his coalition happy.
Trump, similarly, needs his Maga base – who voted for him partly to keep the US out of foreign wars – to know he is not being led by the nose into continuing the fight with Iran.
The US President has been damaged by claims that he was bounced into this war by Israel. Netanyahu reportedly sold him on the idea that the Iranian people would rise up to topple the mullahs. Israel also threatened to start bombing with or without the US, which American leaders feared would leave the US unprepared for retaliatory attacks on its bases in the Middle East.
Some have found a spokesman in Joe Kent, who resigned as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center over the war.
Kent has been accused of anti-Semitism for making claims about Israeli control of US foreign policy, but he speaks for a constituency within the “America First” movement (he has denied his issue is linked to religion). He posted on X this week that Israel was “comfortable with a brutal, drawn-out conflict” from Lebanon to Iran.
A fireball erupts from a building following an Israeli strike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on 28 May (Photo: Kawant Haju/AFP)“We can’t be partners with a country that has an entirely different objective than we do,” Kent wrote, adding: “With Israel, drastically limit the military assistance we provide them to force them off the offence.”
There is no chance of a cut in military aid to Israel under Trump, who likes to boast that he’s done more for Israel than any other US President. But he is also desperate for an Iran deal, and Netanyahu has often stood in the way.
Domestic politics in the US and Israel put the two men on a collision course.
Trump needs a signing ceremony in good time before the US midterm elections in November. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is facing a difficult election at the head of a shaky coalition – as well as his corruption trial. He needed a win in Lebanon and so had been escalating the offensive against Hezbollah. He still needs that win.
Netanyahu’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has emphasised that despite the ceasefire, ground operations in southern Lebanon will continue. Israel’s armed forces would still have “freedom of action”, he said.
Crucially, Hezbollah are not a party to the ceasefire agreement, only the Lebanese government and armed forces. This makes a “complete cessation” of attacks much less likely. Hezbollah has already come out to say it rejects the terms of the deal.
In the lead-up to all this, Trump sidelined Israel in the peace talks with Iran. Israel is “almost entirely out of the loop”, as the New York Times reported, with Netanyahu relegated from “cockpit to economy class”.
Trump also pushed for Lebanon not to be part of the original US–Iran ceasefire agreed in April. That is why there was a separate US-brokered Israel–Lebanon negotiating track, the one that produced last night’s agreement.
Damage after an Israeli strike hit near a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on 1 June (Photo: Kawnat Haju/AFP)But Iran insists on a linkage. “The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said. “Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.”
This is a red line for the Iranian regime. If they do not have a nuclear weapon, then Hezbollah and its missiles – however depleted – are, from their point of view, a vital deterrent in any future conflict with Israel. The Lebanese militia is especially important after so much of Iran’s national armed forces have been destroyed.
For a deal with Iran to succeed, there will have to be a papering over of the cracks, the kind of suspension of disbelief willingly accepted by audiences at wrestling matches.
Netanyahu will have to play his part. Trump has reportedly told aides that Netanyahu “will do whatever I want him to do”. He must hope that Israel’s leader does not revert to type, resuming the offensive against Hezbollah and buying his political survival by defying yet another US president.
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