Israeli analysts call Netanyahu ‘liar,’ ‘humiliated’ by Trump after US-Iran deal

Israeli analysts sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, describing him as a “failure” and a “liar,” while noting that US President Donald Trump “humiliated” him by excluding him from an agreement with Iran to end their military conflict, Anadolu reports.

On Monday evening, Netanyahu acknowledged that he was unaware of the details of the memorandum of understanding reached between Washington and Tehran to end the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on Feb. 28.

Netanyahu claimed he had saved Israelis from “nuclear annihilation” by launching the war against Iran and acknowledged differences of opinion with Trump, saying such disagreements “exist in the best of families.”

While Trump said Monday that the US and Iran had already signed the agreement and that the Strait of Hormuz “will be fully reopened by Friday,” Tehran has said only that the memorandum is scheduled to be signed in Swtizerland on June 19.

‘Architect of failure’

Haaretz columnist Yossi Verter launched a scathing attack on Netanyahu in an article headlined: “Without shame, the architect of failure claimed he saved Israel from collective death. It was another lie among many.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at the height of what any objective expert would define as a colossal strategic failure for the State of Israel and all he has to tell its citizens is: ‘Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, not as long as I am prime minister’,” he wrote.

Netanyahu “has been saying that for 30 years. Yet in the same breath, at his press conference on Monday, Netanyahu claimed Israel had been a hair’s breadth away from ‘mass death’ – a catastrophe he supposedly prevented,” he added.

Tel Aviv and Washington accuse Tehran of pursuing nuclear weapons that threaten Israel and US allies in the region. Iran, however, maintains that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, says it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons and insists it poses no threat to other states.

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Israel, which occupies Palestinian territory as well as land in Lebanon and Syria, is widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal, although it has never officially acknowledged possessing one and is not subject to safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Verter said previous boasts by Netanyahu about “historic achievements for generations” and claims that Iran’s nuclear project had been pushed back by decades “seemed to have dissolved into the sour fog that has descended on Israel.”

“Gone, too, are the lofty goals that accompanied every confrontation with Iran: toppling the regime, or at least creating the conditions for its downfall; eliminating the nuclear and ballistic threats; severing Tehran’s ties to its proxy organizations,” he added.

Netanyahu “has no idea what is contained in the memorandum of understanding the US and Iran digitally signed behind his back. The Iranians know. The Pakistanis know. Presumably the Qataris know. Netanyahu, it seems, does not,” the columnist said.