Netanyahu betrays trump as Israel ruin the ceasefire agreement with iran

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]News night with Abby Phillip. Netanyahu, Trump, and the ceasefire that wasn't there are two things that happened this week that nobody has put in the same room yet. Tonight, we are putting them in the same room. The first, the Trump administration announced what it called a breakthrough framework with Iran, a deal that American officials described as the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East in years.

[00:00:26]The second, within 72 hours of that announcement, Israel launched a new wave of strikes against Iranian linked targets and the ceasefire framework collapsed before the ink was dry. Nobody in Washington has explained on the record who knew what before those strikes were ordered. Here is the sequence that matters. On April 26th, US Special Envoy Steve Witco confirmed that American and Iranian negotiators had reached a preliminary agreement on a ceasefire framework with a formal signing window set for the following week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement the same day saying Israel had been consulted throughout the process. Three days later, the Israeli Defense Forces conducted what they described as necessary preemptive operations against Iranian positions in Syria and Lebanon.

[00:01:20]And the Iranian government formally withdrew from the signing process, citing Israeli aggression conducted, in their words, with American knowledge and cover. Now, let's walk through both tracks because this story has two of them, and they do not go to the same place. Track one is the official narrative. The White House says the United States brokered a ceasefire in good faith. They say Israel was informed but acted independently. They say Iran's withdrawal is a negotiating tactic, not a collapse. National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said, and I am quoting directly here, "The United States remains committed to a diplomatic resolution and will continue to work with all parties." The word betrayal does not appear anywhere in official American communications. The word disappointment does not appear either.

[00:02:14]What appears is the word setback, a carefully chosen word, a word that implies a temporary interruption rather than a deliberate unraveling. Track two is what the sourcing and timeline show.

[00:02:28]The Israeli strikes were not spontaneous. They require days of planning, targeting intelligence, and logistical coordination. Three former senior American defense officials speaking to Reuters on Background this week said it is not operationally possible for Israel to have conducted strikes of that scale without the United States having some window of awareness.

[00:02:51]These officials did not say the United States approved the strikes. They said specifically that the intelligence sharing infrastructure between the two countries makes complete American ignorance implausible. That is not the same as complicity. But it is also not the same as being blindsided. And that distinction is exactly where the two tracks diverge. Here is what we know about the 48 hours before the strikes.

[00:03:17]Netanyahu held two phone calls with senior American officials. The White House has confirmed one of those calls happened. They have not confirmed the content. They have not released a readout. In Washington, when a call between allied leaders happens and no readout is released, that absence is itself a data point. On the Israeli side, Netanyahu's office has said only that security matters were discussed.

[00:03:43]That phrase covers a great deal of ground. The Iranian foreign ministry's statement after the strikes did not accuse Israel alone. It accused in the official translated text, Israel acting under American strategic protections.

[00:03:57]That is a direct quote from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi on April 30th. The State Department called that characterization false and inflammatory.

[00:04:06]They have not to date released a transcript of what was discussed in the call or calls between Netanyahu and American officials in the 48 hours before the strikes. Here is where those two tracks collide for real people.

[00:04:20]Start with the families inside Gaza who were told a ceasefire was coming.

[00:04:24]Humanitarian organizations had already begun staging additional aid shipments based on the announced framework. Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders both confirmed they repositioned resources in anticipation of the opening. When the framework collapsed, those resources were stranded. The World Food Program said last week that northern Gaza is now at the highest level of food insecurity it has recorded in 18 months. That is not a diplomatic abstraction. That is people. Move to the region. The governments of Qatar and Egypt, both of whom served as intermediaries in the ceasefire process, have gone notably quiet. Qatar's foreign ministry issued a one-s sentence statement expressing deep concern. That is diplomatic language for fury. Egypt has said nothing publicly.

[00:05:15]In the Middle East, when a mediating country says nothing, it is often because what they know is too damaging to say out loud and too important to deny. Move to the global picture. Iran now holds a public justification for accelerating its nuclear program, and several of its hardline political factions are using that justification loudly. The International Atomic Energy AY's most recent report issued in March noted that Iran's uranium enrichment had reached levels described as a matter of grave international concern. That report came before the framework collapsed. The question analysts are now raising is whether the collapse hands Iranian hardliners exactly the domestic political cover they needed to move faster. Now I want to be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying. What is confirmed? Israel conducted strikes that directly preceded Iran's withdrawal from the ceasefire process. What is confirmed? The United States and Israel have a standing intelligence sharing relationship that makes complete American ignorance of pre-planned military operations difficult to explain. What is confirmed?

[00:06:30]No American official has provided a detailed account of what was communicated between Washington and Jerusalem in the 48 hours before the strikes. What is analysis? The evidence points toward a deliberate Israeli decision to prevent this particular agreement from taking hold. Analysts who reviewed the strike timing for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy described the operation as structurally inconsistent with the behavior of a government that wanted the ceasefire to succeed. That is their analysis and I am attributing it as such. What sourcing suggests is that elements within the Netanyahu government viewed the Trump brokered framework as a threat to Israel's long-term strategic posture on Iran, regardless of what the framework offered in the near term. That is sourcing. I am not stating it as fact. I am telling you it exists. Now, let's go to the record. Prime Minister Netanyahu gave an interview to Fox News on March 15th of this year. He said, and this is a direct quote, "We support the president's efforts for a diplomatic solution with Iran. Israel wants peace.

[00:07:38]Israel has always wanted peace." That was March 15th. Here is what his office said on April 30th after the framework collapsed. Israel will not allow a nuclear Iran. Israel will act to protect its security regardless of the diplomatic calendar. That is the statement from April 30th. Here's what they said in March. Here is what they said in April. The viewer can do the math. President Trump has not, as of this broadcast, made a direct public statement about Netanyahu's role in the ceasefire collapse. He posted on Truth Social that the Iran deal is still very much alive, which is not an assessment shared by either the Iranian government or the three European foreign ministers who participated in the framework discussions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a brief statement calling for continued engagement. He did not mention Israel. He did not mention the strikes.

[00:08:32]He did not mention the phone calls. What is missing from this story is also part of the story. Let me take you somewhere in recent history because we have been at a crossroads like this before. In 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington and addressed a joint session of Congress to argue against the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration was negotiating. He argued that any deal with Iran was a threat to Israel's existence. He argued that Iran could not be trusted. He argued that diplomacy was being used as a cover for Iranian aggression. The Obama administration and Netanyahu's government had one of the most publicly fractured relationships between Israel and the United States in modern history.

[00:09:17]And yet, the deal was signed. Iran came to the table. The framework held for years until 2018 when President Trump pulled the United States out of it. We are not in 2015. The circumstances are different. Trump is not Obama and the current framework was Trump's framework, which makes Netanyahu's position more complicated and the silence from Washington more revealing. But the underlying question rhymes. The question is whether the United States has the ability to broker a durable agreement in the Middle East when its closest ally in the region has decided that no agreement is better than this agreement. What happened in 2015 and 2018 matters for understanding what could happen now.

[00:10:05]When agreements collapse in the Middle East, they do not restart easily. The people who suffer in the gap between agreements are not the people who sign them or refuse to sign them. They are the people who had nothing to do with signing anything. Tonight's comment poll question. Do you believe the United States knew in advance that Israel planned to conduct strikes before the ceasefire could be finalized? Weigh in.

[00:10:32]We will share the results at the end of the