Yedioth Ahronoth: Israel is anticipating a worst-case scenario from Iran as Washington reaches a partial agreement with Tehran

A report in the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reveals that Israel’s real concern isn’t so much about the possibility of an all-out war with Iran as its focused on a more serious scenario.

This scenario is that the United States reaches a partial agreement with Tehran that is limited to the nuclear issue and leaves the ballistic missile program without any binding restrictions.

From the perspective of the Israeli security establishment, this scenario isn’t a compromise, but rather a negative strategic development that exacerbates rather than contains the threat.

The data indicate that Israel has reached a high level of military and intelligence readiness, benefiting from unprecedented coordination with Washington, which included the exchange of sensitive information and operational lessons learned from the previous confrontation.

However, this readiness collides with a clear US political reluctance to make a decisive decision, which Tehran is well aware of and builds its calculations on.

In this context, Yedioth Ahronoth argues that Israel doesn’t see the continuation of the negotiations as a problem, but rather its possible outcomes, as any agreement that doesn’t address the Iranian missile system leaves the most urgent threat untouched.

According to the Israeli reading, the nuclear program, despite its danger, remains subject to postponement or containment through a strike or agreement, while ballistic missiles pose an immediate and direct threat to Israel’s depth, whether in the event of war or even under mutual deterrence.

Thus, establishing a regional reality in which Iran is granted negotiating legitimacy in exchange for limited nuclear restrictions, while retaining growing missile capabilities, effectively means moving the confrontation to a more complex and more costly phase for Israel.

Yedioth Ahronoth’s estimates also reflect Israel’s fear that this path will erode US deterrence in the region, which will encourage Iran to test red lines in the future, whether through its regional tools or by strengthening its own capabilities.

In such a scenario, Israel finds itself facing an adversary that has emerged from the negotiations politically stronger and more militarily confident, and an US ally that has power but prefers to manage the crisis rather than resolve it.

The worst in Israel’s calculations isn’t the outbreak of an all-out war, but the postponement of it on worse terms.

A postponed war under Iran is more armed, less restrictive, and with ambiguity in US commitment, means that the window for action is gradually narrowing, and that the cost of any future confrontation will be higher and more complex.

From this standpoint, it seems that the dilemma facing Israel today is not about the lack of options, but rather about Washington’s favoring of an option that Tel Aviv considers the most dangerous to its strategic security: an incomplete agreement that buys time for Iran and consumes it from Israel.