US-Iran ceasefire leaves Israel short of war objectives

The ceasefire struck between the US and Iran has ended the fighting without delivering Israel’s core war aims, analysts say, prompting swift condemnation from Israeli opposition figures who cast the outcome as a serious strategic setback.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had framed the conflict around a central objective: eliminating, or at minimum sharply crippling, Iran’s nuclear programme, which he has long portrayed as an “existential threat” to Israel.

He also said Israel sought to dismantle Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and to weaken, or even bring down, the Iranian regime.

“On all three, objectively, he’s failed,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, just hours after Israel declared its backing for the US-Iran truce.

Iranians wave national flags in Tehran after the ceasefire was reached

Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House, said Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities had clearly been reduced from where they stood before the war, but its clerical leadership remained in place.

“Regime change hasn’t happened,” Professor Mekelberg said.

“Some of the people in the regime changed because they were killed… But regime change definitely didn’t happen.”

On Iran’s nuclear programme, Prof Mekelberg said it remained too soon to make a firm assessment.

‘Deeply troubling’

For Danny Citrinowicz, a senior Iran researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, the early signs were “deeply troubling”.

“The regime is still firmly in power. Its missile capabilities are damaged but still intact. It still holds roughly 440kg of uranium enriched to 60%,” he wrote on X.

Following agreement on a two-week truce to stop the war, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February, Iran and the US are due to begin talks in Pakistan on Friday.

Although Tehran has agreed to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, major disputes remain with Washington over future control of the strategic waterway, uranium enrichment and sanctions.

“At the very least, one has to hope that the negotiations in Islamabad will produce a different outcome on the nuclear issue,” Mr Citrinowicz said.

“Otherwise, we risk emerging from this war worse off than when it began.”

Flames rise from a building after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon

In what appeared to clash with terms outlined by mediator Pakistan, Israel has maintained that the ceasefire does not extend to Lebanon, where its forces are battling Iran-backed Hezbollah for the second time in less than two years.

“That’s already a point of conflict,” in the fragile truce, Ms Zonszein said.

“We’ll have to see how much (US President Donald) Trump is going to step in,” she added, saying Israel would want to keep fighting in Lebanon and treat that front separately from the war with Iran.

“I think Israel is adamant that the Lebanon issue is not done,” Prof Mekelberg of Chatham House said.

Israel has since carried out what it called its “largest coordinated” strikes on Hezbollah since the war began.

‘Victory narrative’

Analysts said it was still too early to measure how the war might reshape Israel’s ties with Gulf states, or Mr Netanyahu’s push to broaden the Abraham Accords.

Both Ms Zonszein and Prof Mekelberg said the conflict had laid bare the Gulf countries’ vulnerabilities, while also underscoring Iran’s willingness to strike regional neighbours, forcing governments to reconsider their security arrangements.

A string of Israeli opposition politicians have attacked the ceasefire with Iran, branding it a major failure whose consequences could take years to undo.

“There has never been a political disaster like this in our entire history,” the country’s main opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X.

But Ms Zonszein said Mr Netanyahu would seek to present the war as a success, especially by highlighting the close coordination between US and Israeli forces against their longtime regional enemy.

“The minute that the war began as a joint US-Israeli operation, that was already the victory that Netanyahu needed and wanted and whatever happened was secondary,” she said.

“I think Netanyahu will use that still as his victory narrative that ‘we degraded the Iranian regime. They are weaker now. It’s not the same Iran,” she added.

With Israeli parliamentary elections due by the end of October, Mr Netanyahu’s political future will soon be tested by voters.

Israelis would feel “immediate relief” after the ceasefire, but “there will be real discussion if this was all worth it,” Prof Mekelberg said.