Why Is Israel Silent in the US-Iran Standoff?

The tension between the United States and Iran has, as of February 2026, evolved to a point where the risk of military confrontation can no longer be discounted. In this context, as Washington assesses intelligence indicating that Iran has been rebuilding its nuclear and ballistic missile capacity following the Iran-Israel conflict of June 2025, the question of whether the new negotiating process launched with Tehran in Oman on 6 February — and said to be continuing — represents a genuine diplomatic opening or a tactic to buy time for military preparation carries considerable weight.

While all this unfolds on the US-Iran line, the impression has formed that Israel has stayed, or been kept, in the background. Indeed, Israeli officials who issued various threatening statements in the first days of the protest process that began in Iran on 28 December 2025 appear to have been following the matter from a distance for some time. Nor is the issue confined to Tel Aviv’s approach to the protests in Iran. A possible second round of US military operations makes Israel’s role in this process all the more critical. An examination of open sources indicates that Tel Aviv’s silence is a deliberate choice rather than a withdrawal, and that it is taking an active position behind the scenes.

Military and diplomatic traffic

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have raised the question of a fresh strike on Iran during his meeting with US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on 29 December 2025. Netanyahu, who presented Trump with intelligence indicating that Iran had brought its ballistic missile programme close to its pre-twelve-day-conflict level, that is, to a capacity of roughly 2,500 missiles, declared in the Knesset on 5 January that Israel would not permit Iran to rebuild its missile capacity and nuclear programme. The same day, it was reported that strike options against Iran had been reviewed during Netanyahu’s five-hour meeting with his security cabinet. While this was taking place on the Israeli side, another striking development was the intensive military coordination between the United States and Israel.

In the final days of January it was claimed that the Israeli Chief of the General Staff, Eyal Zamir, had secretly visited the United States together with the Air Force commander, the head of Military Intelligence operations and the head of the Tevel Unit, and had met the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A week before that visit, the head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Major General Binder, had visited the United States.

Separately, Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff held a three-and-a-half-hour meeting in Tel Aviv on 3 February, a few days before the Oman talks, with Prime Minister Netanyahu and security officials. Following that meeting, Netanyahu — in Washington to meet Trump for the seventh time, having met him six times in a single year — was briefed by Witkoff and Jared Kushner on the talks held with Iran.

With the process on this course, the statement made on 2 February by the US Ambassador to Israel, Michael Dale Huckabee, sums up the scale of US-Israeli coordination. Huckabee said it was “inconceivable” that a strike on Iran would be carried out without being coordinated with Israel. Brigadier General Omer Tishler, the future commander of the Israeli Air Force, was to have been included in Netanyahu’s 11 February delegation, but this was abandoned at the last moment out of concern that it would “create the impression that war preparations are under way.” That the plan was walked back at all shows how operational the meeting’s dimension was.

What is Israel’s real concern?

Israel’s fundamental concern is not so much whether the United States will strike Iran as the possibility that the Trump administration will move towards an agreement that merely freezes the nuclear programme while leaving ballistic missile capacity and the proxy network outside the accord. In Israel’s view, Iran has reached a production capacity of up to 300 missiles a month, and this has led to the rapid erosion of the gains secured in the June 2025 conflict.

Netanyahu’s decision to bring his Washington visit forward by a week, from 18 February to 11 February, demonstrated the scale of this concern. The assessment given to Al Jazeera by Netanyahu’s former adviser Mitchell Barak is another manifestation of it. In Barak’s view, Trump may pursue an agreement that presents him as a “peacemaker” rather than strike Iran.

The statements made after the 11 February meeting showed that these concerns are not misplaced from Tel Aviv’s standpoint. From Israel’s perspective, the “melting away” of the military gains obtained in June 2025 at the negotiating table is a major risk. In the end, Trump appears determined not to leave the table. Netanyahu, for his part, made no public statement, expressing his discomfort indirectly. How far this picture reflects a real disagreement and how far it is a calculated division of roles is a separate question.

Where is the process heading?

Israel’s behind-the-scenes preparations should be read as taking up an operational position in anticipation of an approaching conflict. Assessments by Western think tanks broadly support this picture. On this reading, the ceasefire of June 2025 was no more than a tactical pause rather than a durable transformation, and the next round of fighting is very likely to be larger than the last.

That 2026 is an election year in Israel is an additional factor pushing Netanyahu towards a hard line on Iran. Although the only way for Israel to preserve the gains of the “Rising Lion” operation would be an agreement, the likelihood of such an agreement under present conditions is low. Iran’s retention of its enriched uranium stockpiles and the absence of IAEA inspectors on the ground render intelligence-based assessments uncertain. That uncertainty in turn strengthens Israel’s inclination towards a pre-emptive move rather than a wait-and-see strategy.

Taken as a whole, the posture Israel has adopted since the beginning of 2026 looks less like “silence” than a deliberately sustained, multi-layered strategy of ambiguity. Within that ambiguity, Tel Aviv is pursuing a four-part agenda: (i) by not appearing directly involved in the protests in Iran, encouraging pressure on the regime to build from within; (ii) preparing for possible “second round” military operations; (iii) pressing Washington not to push the ballistic missile question outside the negotiating framework; and (iv) positioning itself against the possibility that Trump moves towards a narrow agreement that does not place Israel’s red lines at its centre.

The 11 February meeting between Trump and Netanyahu deepened this ambiguity further. While Trump insists on negotiation, a steadily expanding military build-up is under way on the ground, and Israel continues to supply the intelligence infrastructure for that build-up. What is more, Israel is making its most critical moves not in the visible arena but through closed diplomacy and security mechanisms. The simultaneous advance of Trump’s insistence on talks and the build-up in theatre strengthens the possibility that the visible disagreement between Washington and Tel Aviv is a controlled division of roles.

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This article was first published in IRAM on February 17, 2026.