US Intelligence Assessment Concludes Israel Will Continue Hezbollah Operations Despite Iran Deal

Analysis
The June 20 ceasefire is unlikely to survive intact through mid-July. Netanyahu's electoral calculus rewards sustained Hezbollah pressure, and Israel's security establishment reads the MoU as a constraint on operational latitude rather than a ceiling it intends to honor. US officials assess a sustained IDF presence in southern Lebanon absent full withdrawal is itself sufficient to derail the agreement, putting the Trump administration on a collision course between pressuring Israel and protecting the MoU. Strikes on the ceasefire's announcement day may instead reflect a bounded response to Hezbollah's projectile barrage rather than a deliberate strategy to abandon it. Moderate confidence rests on the Washington Post as the sole original report, corroborated by observable strike activity; Netanyahu's internal deliberations remain inaccessible to open-source collection.