Israel spent years confusing American permission with sovereign power. Netanyahu’s reported panic exposed the difference. The moment Washington demonstrated that Israeli military action could itself become an object of regional management, “freedom of action” revealed its real meaning: not independence, but a license issued elsewhere — and therefore a license that can be revised.

The report that Benjamin Netanyahu was “panicking” over a new American-Iranian mechanism concerning Lebanon was quickly softened. A senior American official denied that Israel had been excluded. Washington, he explained, would remain in close contact with Jerusalem, and a direct American channel to Iran might even serve Israeli interests.

That reassurance should worry Israel more than the original report.

The central question is not whether an Israeli representative receives a chair, a briefing or a telephone call. It is whether Israel participates in determining the regional arrangement or merely receives information about decisions shaped elsewhere. A country may remain “consulted” while ceasing to be an author of the conditions under which it acts.

The proposed mechanism reportedly brought together the United States, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar and Pakistan. Israel’s interests, Washington suggested, could be represented indirectly through American coordination. This is the diplomatic equivalent of being told that one need not attend the meeting because a trusted adult will explain the outcome afterward.

Netanyahu’s anxiety was therefore rational. It revealed something his entire political mythology has been designed to conceal.

Israel’s celebrated “freedom of action” was never simply freedom. It was a permission structure sustained by American diplomatic protection, weapons, intelligence cooperation and the expectation that Washington would absorb the........

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