Julian Borger

And the ceasefire I hold is a question and a test of his authority.

He outwardly claims, overtly claims to have complete control of the situation.

Obviously, he doesn't, because Netanyahu has his own constituency.

The right wing in Israel is not going to stand for an attack from Iran without an Israeli response.

They're not going to stand for a Hezbollah attack without some significant response.

He has to keep his coalition together.

He is...

heading towards elections, which at the moment, at present rankings, he will lose.

His block will lose out.

So he has to do something.

The peace deal as it stands, as it has been laid out in reports, does not suit him at all because he will go to the country not having done what he set out to do, which was to stop the nuclear program in Iran once and for all.

This deal, if it is as it stands, will not do that.

Yes, absolutely.

And so it's a really a test of the it's a test of strength between the two men.

Netanyahu has found he can get away with a bit before completely alienating Trump and leading to the kind of outbursts that we've seen in recent weeks.

He has to walk that line because completely alienating the U.S.

also is unpopular news.

uh in is israel he's tried to keep various parts of his coalition together and that means in terms of the relationship with the u.s he has to carefully walk a line show that he has uh independent agency but not piss off the americans so that they take actual you know action to withhold or aid uh something like that something really tangible

Well, from the recent reporting, we've heard that they have retained a lot of their missile capability.

They still have substantial drone capability.