JD Vance was supposed to be in Switzerland on Friday for the opening round of new peace negotiations with Iran.

It’s possible that by the time you read this, he’ll be there, or at least en route.

But regardless of whether Vance ultimately spends his weekend chatting with Abbas Araghchi at a resort on Lake Lucerne, the fact that Switzerland had to postpone the Bürgenstock talks due to another day of Israeli bombing in Lebanon speaks to widespread concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu might deliberately undermine the peace process.

Apologists for Netanyahu, and for Israel’s uncompromising national security doctrine more generally, will immediately point out that the IDF was attacked first. Just after midnight, four soldiers were killed when Hezbollah ambushed a tank crew in Kfar Tebnit, an upscale Israeli suburb. Oh, wait. Kfar Tebnit’s a village in southern Lebanon. (See where I’m going with that?)

As is their wont, Israel got it back in blood. Times four. And counting. At least 18 people were killed in subsequent Israeli airstrikes.

The IDF’s social media accounts posted a grainy, two-second video of what it said was a Hezbollah launcher firing rockets. In addition to strikes on more than 80 sites in southern Lebanon, the IDF hit “two Hezbollah command centers” in the Beqaa Valley.

As an aside, and without wanting to downplay the threat to Israel or the ubiquity of the Hezbollah presence across Lebanon, I’m continually amazed at how many “command centers” the group has in a country the size of Connecticut.

Every week, the IDF says it destroyed another several “command centers.” If it has four walls and a roof and it’s in Lebanon, there’s a one-third chance it’s a Hezbollah “command center,” apparently. Those odds are more like 75% if it’s a structure in Dahiya.

The Israeli right would say that’s precisely the point. I’d ask, respectfully, if the IDF’s definition of “command center” might be a little too loose. Hold that thought.

The IDF bragged Friday that “dozens” of “terrorists” who were among the living before the Hezbollah attack on the Israeli tank crew are now rubbing shoulders with thousands of their compatriots, both celebrities and nobodies, in the standing-room-only afterlife social club reserved for slain members of Iran’s defunct “Axis of Resistance.” (There’s a VIP room in the back where Qassem Soleimani and Hassan Nasrallah sign propaganda posters. But you have to wait in line. No cutting. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow it up there, Ali. Don’t be pushin’ and shovin.’ You just got here. Some of these guys have been waitin’ a year to see the General. Be patient. You’ve got an eternity.”)

I don’t know what Trump’s going to do with Netanyahu at this point. The usual stuff — stern phone calls, desperate entreaties, veiled threats of curtailed arms sales and so on — stopped working a very long time ago.

He — Netanyahu — seems to believe that his best, and maybe only, shot at staying in power following the first Israeli election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, is to keep the country on a war footing. To perpetuate a quasi-state of exception. Polls suggest his coalition won’t win a majority and at least half the Israeli public says he shouldn’t seek another stint as prime minister.

Haunted by questions about security failures ahead of the Hamas incursion and dogged by a legacy of alleged corruption, retaining power’s a personal imperative for Netanyahu, whose pre-October 7 domestic machinations bore the hallmarks of autocratic consolidation.

Uncouth as this sounds, the Hamas attack was a political godsend for Netanyahu. The rally around the flag effect put an immediate end to government in-fighting and halted the largest protest movement in Israel’s history. If the wars end, and Israelis are allowed to refocus on domestic issues, Netanyahu could face a reckoning.

Relatedly, Trump’s MOU robs Netanyahu of a chance to “settle all family business,” Michael Corleone style. Everyone’s martyred. That part’s done. (“Barzini is dead. So is Philip Tattaglia. Moe Greene. Stracci. Cuneo.”) But the regime in Tehran’s still there. And Trump’s arrangement with the IRGC allows for its survival, conditioned on… well, conditioned on nothing, really, but codified or not, the conditions of the ceasefire include an implicit threat that the US could come back. Whatever you want to say about Trump, one thing you can’t say is that his threats of military action are idle.

Such a threat isn’t good enough for Netanyahu, though. Not even close. He wants that regime and everything to do with it gone. By definition that includes the Guards, and because Iran’s a mafia state where the IRGC’s not only embedded in, but is synonymous with, all parts of the economy, banking sector, civil service and so on, you can’t kill the Guards without killing the country. That’s why many fear Netanyahu’s end goal is a failed Iranian state.

“Netanyahu promised the Israeli public ‘total victory’ in Iran [but] he had to settle for Trump’s MOU,” Axios wrote this week, describing an Israeli right that’s furious with Trump and Vance. “One prime-time host on Netanyahu-aligned Channel 14 called [the US vice president] a ‘scumbag’ and used a slur to accuse Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner of selling out Israel for financial gain.”

For his part, Vance on Thursday castigated Israel. “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said. “Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation in that country.” (Yikes.)

Vance wasn’t finished. In the same remarks, he all but accused the IDF of murder. Recent airstrikes in Beirut not only jeopardized ceasefire talks with Iran, they killed people who, as Vance put it, “have nothing to do with Hezbollah.”

In an interview with Israeli public broadcaster KAN News, Trump said he’ll probably endorse Netanyahu in the upcoming election, but added he’ll have to see who else decides to run.

“I have a good relationship with Bibi, but he needs to be more rational,” Trump said. “Maybe you don’t need to bring down a building every time a Hezbollah member walks into it.”