The numbers tell a story that Israeli officials are struggling to spin away. A Channel 12 poll published Thursday revealed that only 11% of Israelis believe Israel won the war with Iran, while 43% say Israel lost, and 41% describe the outcome as inconclusive. At the same time, 71% of Israelis do not trust President Trump to protect Israeli interests in a deal with Iran — up from 62% just one week earlier. These are not the numbers of a nation celebrating victory.
The figures represent a seismic shift in Israeli public opinion toward a president who has long enjoyed remarkable popularity in the Jewish state. For years, poll after poll showed Israelis embracing Trump as a once-in-a-generation ally. That reservoir of goodwill is draining fast. A series of increasingly public disagreements between Washington and Jerusalem, capped by Vice President JD Vance’s blunt warning to Israeli critics of the deal — “wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in” — has underscored the depth of the current rift.
The discord flows directly from the US-Iran memorandum of understanding signed at Versailles on June 17. The MOU, signed by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, sets a 60-day timeline for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, secures Iran’s reaffirmation that it will not pursue a nuclear weapon, and includes sanctions relief for Iran along with a commitment to a reconstruction and development plan. Israeli officials were not shown the text in advance. According to Channel 12, Jerusalem requested to review the memorandum, but Washington declined, reportedly out of concern that the details would be leaked.
The Israeli public’s assessment of Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations is equally damning. 52% of Israelis feel that Netanyahu’s conduct harmed Israeli interests in the US-Iran negotiations, while only 24% believe his actions helped. The Likud party, reading the political winds, quietly shelved a planned campaign centered on Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump — a relationship that was, until recently, a core campaign asset.
Trump, for his part, offered a characteristically layered message Thursday. In a phone interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, he said he would “most likely” endorse Netanyahu for the October elections — then immediately added that he wants to see who else is running. “I’ll have to look at who’s running, but I like Bibi very much. I would be most likely to endorse him,” Trump said. “He’s doing a very good job, he’s got to be a little bit more rational” — an apparent reference to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon that the US claims have been indiscriminate.
Trump also pushed back hard against Israeli skepticism about the deal itself. “The Israeli people should support the deal because we took the nuclear weapon threat away against Israel,” he told Kan. He repeated a claim he made earlier in the week: “If it wasn’t for Donald Trump, Israel wouldn’t exist right now. They would have been blown off the planet.” On the question of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — left unresolved by the MOU and subject to future negotiations — Trump was dismissive. “It’s buried under a mountain that nobody can get to except us; it’s very safely buried under a mountain and at the right time we will get it,” he said. “It’s very unimportant, frankly.”
Israeli defense officials do not share that assessment. Senior Israeli officials warn that Tehran “will drag out the process, and the 60 days of negotiation will turn into much more,” and that it would be surprising if Iran did not use “all its efforts and tricks to shorten the timeline to nuclear breakout under the cover of negotiations.” Israel further assesses that Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei approved the MOU primarily to open up the Strait of Hormuz and secure economic relief for the regime — with no genuine intention of reaching a final nuclear agreement.
The prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) warned of precisely this dynamic — placing trust in a powerful foreign patron only to find that the patron’s interests and Israel’s interests are not the same. “Thus said the Lord: Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who makes mere flesh his strength, and turns his thoughts from God.” (Jeremiah 17:5). The verse is not a call to isolationism. It is a call to clarity — to see alliances for what they are, to measure commitments against reality, and never to mistake a friend’s interests for one’s own.
The poll also found that opposition Zionist parties would win more seats than the Netanyahu-led bloc of right-wing and religious parties if elections were held today, though they would still fall short of the 61-seat majority needed to form a government. October is still months away, and the political map will shift again — but the Channel 12 numbers signal that the terms on which Netanyahu built his political identity, strong ties to Washington and a tougher line against Iran, are both under severe pressure at the same moment.
Eleven percent. That is the share of Israelis who believe their country won this war. Whatever the final shape of a nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s leadership — and its ally in Washington — will need to answer to that number.
