JERUSALEM – For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the resumption of fighting with Iran on June 7 may have shown his supporters, at least momentarily, that he still was capable of standing up to US President Donald Trump.

But the halt to the fighting on June 8, after less than 15 hours, left Israel and its embattled leader in a bind and appearing as beholden to Trump as ever.

If Netanyahu had hopes of undermining the peace talks Trump has been pursuing with Iran, the president’s pressure on both sides to stop the airstrikes – and Israel’s abandonment of preparations for another attack on June 8 – showed this had failed.

The burst of warfare may have also altered how the warring parties weigh and respond to each new set of attacks – and not in a way that is advantageous for Israel.

Israel now understands that Iran can have its proxy army in Lebanon, Hezbollah, attack civilians in northern Israel, that Israeli counterstrikes at Hezbollah may prompt Iran to launch missiles at Israel and that Trump may prevent Israel from hitting back at Iran too hard or for too long.

“This was a major change,” said Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran programme at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Israel. He said it showed that Iran’s hard-line government was full of confidence and had concluded that “President Trump doesn’t want to go back to war, so they can take some risks to make sure this linkage of developments in Iran and Lebanon is maintained.”

The latest round of violence erupted days after a new ceasefire was reached in Washington between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah rejected the agreement, and Israel threatened to retaliate in Beirut if Hezbollah attacked Israeli territory again.

When Hezbollah did so, firing rockets at Israel on June 7, Netanyahu ordered a strike on the Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold on the southern outskirts of Beirut.

Hours later, Iran responded by firing the first of around 30 missiles at Israel. And on June 8, Iran’s ally in Yemen...