JD Vance Should Thank Israel Instead of Trash Talking the Jewish State

Israel made Trump’s Iran deal possible. Washington should not repay it by letting Tehran use Hormuz to rebuild Hezbollah.

Bob Goldberg | The New Zionist Times | Jun 18, 2026

Screengrab via Youtube

JD Vance is worried that Israel is isolated.

He should ask why.

If Donald Trump is now the only head of state in the world openly sympathetic to Israel, the explanation is not mysterious. Israel is isolated because it did what the rest of the world would not. It entered the war against Iran. It took the risk. It supplied the intelligence. It absorbed the retaliation. It made America’s victory possible.

This is not a sentimental point. It is a strategic one.

Operation Epic Fury destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, gutted its missile inventory, wrecked key manufacturing capacity, crippled its defense-industrial base, neutralized air-defense networks built over two decades, and eliminated senior IRGC leadership, including the Supreme Leader himself. This was not a raid. It was the systematic dismantling of a regime’s war-making architecture.

And it was, in crucial respects, an Israeli achievement.

Israel made Epic Fury devastating because it supplied the things American power often lacks on its own: intimate access, human intelligence, target geometry, and real-time knowledge of the regime’s military architecture.

The core contribution was intelligence penetration. Israeli networks had reportedly mapped Iranian procurement channels, nuclear-support facilities, command nodes, missile infrastructure, and hardened sites that satellite collection alone could not reliably characterize. That mattered because destroying a nuclear or missile program is not just a matter of dropping heavy ordnance. You have to know which tunnel mouth matters, which power node feeds which cascade hall, which workshop produces guidance systems, which warehouse holds solid-fuel components, and which “civilian” facility is actually part of the defense-industrial chain.

Israel also supplied targeting architecture. Israeli intelligence gave Washington the “eyes and maps” needed to distinguish symbolic targets from system-critical ones: Fordow and Natanz layouts, missile-launch infrastructure, air-defense nodes, IRGC command centers, manufacturing sites, and logistics chokepoints. That allowed Epic Fury to move beyond punishment strikes into something much more consequential — the dismantling of Iran’s war-making system. Your draft states the result directly: the operation damaged Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, missile inventory, air-defense network, military leadership, and manufacturing base.

Israel’s air campaign also appears to have opened the battlefield. Public reporting on the 2026 Iran war describes Israel’s “Roaring Lion” campaign as involving roughly 200 Israeli aircraft striking hundreds of targets in western and central Iran, including air defenses and missile launchers, in what Israel described as its largest combat sortie. That would have degraded Iran’s ability to detect, track, and contest follow-on American strikes.

Cyber and electronic warfare were another multiplier. Reporting summarized in open-source accounts says U.S.-Israeli cyber operations disrupted Iranian command-and-control, communications, sensor networks, media, and domestic internet connectivity during the opening phase. That would have compounded the air-defense collapse: Iran was not merely hit; it was blinded, confused, and partially cut off from its own response mechanisms.

Finally, Israel — check that, Israeli citizens – absorbed the retaliation. Iran’s missile salvos against Israel were not random; they were punishment for the Israeli role in making the American strike effective. That matters politically because Israel did not merely benefit from an American operation. It helped enable one, then took the blowback. Israel supplied the intelligence, opened the skies, identified the organs of the regime’s war machine, and then stood under the missiles when Iran tried to exact the price.

Israel made Epic Fury possible by supplying what American firepower could not generate on its own: penetration of Iranian procurement networks, granular mapping of hardened nuclear and missile facilities, target geometry for sites satellites could not read, cyber and electronic disruption of Iranian command systems, and the air campaign that helped collapse Iran’s defenses.

Israeli intelligence had penetrated Iranian procurement networks, mapped the hardened facilities at Fordow and Natanz, and supplied the targeting architecture for sites the United States could not have located with comparable precision on its own. American logistics, refueling, and suppression assets amplified the campaign. But the eyes were Israeli. The maps were Israeli. The operational knowledge was Israeli.

That is why the operation did not merely punish Iran; it crippled the machinery by which Iran builds, hides, launches, and commands its wars.

Iran knew this. Iran attacked Israel not because Israel was a helpless client sheltering under American protection. Not because Israel had dragged America into someone else’s war. Iran struck Israel because Israel had helped America strike Iran.

That is the fact that the Trump administration seemingly finds inconvenient.

Israel absorbed the retaliatory risk. Iran’s missile salvos against Israel were not random; they were punishment for the Israeli role in making the American strike effective. That matters politically because Israel did not merely benefit from an American operation. It helped enable one, then took the blowback.

Israel supplied the intelligence, opened the skies, identified the organs of the regime’s war machine, and then stood under the missiles when Iran tried to exact the price.

Israel was the indispensable partner in an American campaign. It was then hit for being that partner. America used American-funded defenses, including THAAD, to help keep Israel alive under Iranian retaliation, as it did in defending other Gulf states. The difference is that the other countries (the Emirates being the exception) did not join the fight, did not offer America their blood and treasure as did the Jewish State.

Then Washington signed an MOU that constrains Israel in Lebanon while handing Iran new leverage over Hormuz.

There is a word for this. It is not gratitude.

Trump and Vance owe Israel a thank-you. Not a lecture or unseemly pissing contest with the contemptible Ben Gvir. A strategic thank-you. Without Israel, there is likely no Epic Fury. Without Epic Fury, there is no Iranian military collapse to convert into diplomacy. Without Israeli intelligence and Israeli willingness to absorb retaliation, there is no MOU for Washington to announce.

That is the irony. The agreement exists because Israel helped weaken Iran enough to sign it. And now Israel must live with the consequences of the agreement America signed.

For thirty years, Pentagon wargames reached the same conclusion: fight Iran, and the IRGC closes the Strait of Hormuz with mines, fast boats, and anti-ship missiles.

This was not obscure. It was the central Iranian play.

Yet six months before Epic Fury, the Navy retired its MH-53E Sea Dragon mine-countermeasure helicopters. A month later, it decommissioned Bahrain’s four Avenger-class minesweepers. Their replacements — three LCS vessels with bolt-on mine-countermeasure packages — were magnetically vulnerable and rated below 30 percent effective against modern moored mines.

Then Iran mined Hormuz within hours of the first strike.

Washington had no viable unilateral way to clear it. Admiral Caudle later admitted escort operations would exceed the Navy’s effective capacity. Translation: the Navy had spent thirty years gaming the exact crisis it entered the war unable to solve.

Worse, the war plan appears to have rested on a wager: that Hormuz would reopen before emergency oil reserves reached politically critical levels.

It did not.

The oil reserve was not a strategy. It was a timer. Once the timer started running, Iran did not need to defeat the United States Navy. It needed only to wait until the economics of the crisis weakened Washington’s negotiating position.

That is how the MOU became possible. Not because Iran was strong. Because America had made itself dependent on Iranian cooperation to solve a crisis America had long known Iran would create. On the other hand, Iran

The June 14 MOU addresses mine clearance in the most revealing way: not by placing Hormuz under American, coalition, or neutral control, but by allowing full reopening within 30 days after “de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Translation: Iran mined the strait. Iran now certifies it safe.

After three months of war, blockade, casualties, and $130 oil, Washington left Hormuz clearance and certification to the IRGC Navy — the force that mined it, re-mined it, kept no reliable map of its own ordnance, and had declared the strait “closed to all vessels” days earlier.

This is not peace. It is leverage.

After 60 days, Iran and Oman are to define the strait’s future “management and maritime services” with Gulf-state consultation. Temporary reopening becomes institutionalized Iranian control. Once shippers, insurers, and operators adapt to IRGC-supervised transit, Tehran’s threat to close the strait becomes stronger, not weaker.

A rebuilt chokepoint is a better hostage.

The MOU’s economic terms do not merely reward Iran. They help fund Hezbollah’s recovery. The Institute for the Study of War June 17 report captures the Iranian end-state framing with precision: top Iranian officials were publicly claiming they had satisfied their core war aims by “controlling the Strait of Hormuz and preserving Hezbollah.” Now the MOU allows Iran to use the strait to finance it’s proxy

Iran’s renewed access to money, shipping, banking, insurance, and transport gives Hezbollah what it needs most: time, cash, and commercial cover. The pipeline was already operating before the MOU. Hezbollah was paying fighters, procuring weapons, and developing drones and missiles. When air and land routes became harder, the IRGC expanded maritime smuggling.

The MOU’s normalization of Hormuz traffic gives that network cover. At commercial scale, dual-use cargo becomes just another container in the flow.

This is the part Vance should study carefully.

Israel helped America break Iran’s war machine. The MOU gives Iran a protected interval to rebuild Hezbollah, the forward trigger aimed at Israel.

The mechanism is simple. Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran calls it an “all-fronts” ceasefire violation. The IRGC slows transit, suspends permits, threatens re-mining, or closes Hormuz again.

The strait is the financial gun. Hezbollah is the trigger. Lebanon is the wedge.

This is not theory. Iran has already used Hormuz as a response mechanism to Israeli operations in Lebanon. It has already tried to transform negotiations over Iran into negotiations over Israel’s freedom of action against Hezbollah. The MOU gives that strategy a framework.

Which is why the agreement should be understood for what it is: not merely a framework for ending a war, but a mechanism for isolating Israel from the ally whose campaign it helped win.

Israel made Epic Fury possible. Israel absorbed Iran’s revenge. Israel now faces Hezbollah’s reconstitution under cover of the agreement made possible by Iran’s defeat.

And Washington calls this diplomacy.

There is a familiar pattern here. Israel acts. The world condemns. America benefits. Then Washington discovers complications and asks Israel for restraint.

Restraint, in this case, means allowing Iran to use Hormuz as a weapon while Hezbollah rebuilds under the cover of a ceasefire. It means turning Israel’s battlefield contribution into Israel’s strategic liability. It means thanking the fireman by handing the hydrant over to the arsonist.

If Israel is isolated, it is isolated because it stood where others would not. Europe postured. The Gulf states hedged. The international community issued statements. Israel acted.

Because Israel acted, America could strike Iran’s nuclear infrastructure with historic success. Because Israel acted, Iran was weakened enough to negotiate. Because Israel acted, Trump had an MOU to announce.

The thanks Israel received was an agreement that gives Iran leverage over Hormuz and time to rebuild Hezbollah.

The test now is simple. Will Washington let this architecture harden, or stop it?

Stopping it means rejecting Iran’s “all-fronts” reading of the MOU. It means tranching assets against verified compliance. It means interdicting Hezbollah resupply before normal commerce hides it. It means independent mine-clearance verification, not faith in “Iranian arrangements.”

None of this is elegant. All of it is necessary.

JD Vance is right to care about American interests. But American interests are not served by treating Israel as a liability after relying on it as an asset.

Israel helped America win. Trump should say so. Vance should remember it.

And Washington should not repay the only ally that entered the fight by leaving it alone with the consequences of the deal its courage made possible.