Netanyahu threw a wrench in the works — but the US-Iran deal survived

The path to the US-Iran ceasefire agreement announced Sunday was anything but smooth. An Israeli strike on Lebanon in the early hours of that day threw the negotiations into turmoil until the very end.

Israel, which had long opposed the deal, struck Beirut under the banner of targeting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group operating in Lebanon. Iran responded with a counterattack, raising fears that the talks could collapse entirely.

Just hours before the agreement was set to be signed, Trump publicly criticized Israel's Beirut strike on his Truth Social platform. "The attack on Beirut on Monday morning, June 15, should not have happened," he wrote, adding that it was especially ill-timed "on such a special day, when we are so close to a peace agreement with Iran."

Trump said Israel had the right to defend itself, but argued that "the attack they responded to was very small and insignificant" and that it "should not be allowed to interfere with this very important process." He urged all parties to exercise restraint, saying the United States was "very close to a deal that will bring peace to this region, including Lebanon."

Trump had said he planned to sign the agreement on Monday — his 80th birthday — but after the strike he vented that the signing was being delayed "because of the damn attack."

Israel said it launched the strike after Hezbollah sent three drones into Israeli airspace, targeting suburbs south of Beirut. Lebanese media reported at least three people were killed and 15 wounded.

Iran pushed back immediately. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament, posted on X that the strike "once again showed that the United States lacks either the will or the ability to honor its commitments," adding that "if the US cannot keep its promises, it is impossible to continue discussing negotiations at all."

Yet some analysts argued that Israel's Beirut strike may have paradoxically accelerated the deal. The New York Times reported that as fears grew of a renewed Iran-Israel confrontation derailing the talks, negotiators moved faster to finalize the agreement's language. "Ironically, Netanyahu's Beirut strike — which had threatened to torpedo the deal — ended up speeding its signing and producing an outcome more favorable to Iran," the paper said.

Meanwhile, analysts say Trump's urgency in pushing for a ceasefire — to the point of publicly rebuking Israel — reflects the mounting political and economic costs of a prolonged war.

With midterm elections approaching in November, a sharp rise in global oil prices and a resurgence of inflation represent serious liabilities for Trump.

Iran, for its part, had wielded the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz as leverage even under intense pressure from the United States and Israel. Analysts say the economic damage from a prolonged US maritime blockade had reached a breaking point.