Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu clashed with far-right members of his security cabinet on Monday over how Israel should answer President Donald Trump’s demand that it stop striking Iran, with the prime minister defending close coordination with Washington while National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir pressed for open defiance, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

The dispute also turned on a strategic question of whether Israel should keep confronting Iran directly or shift the weight of its military pressure onto the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to the report. The exchanges took place during a series of limited security consultations at the Kirya military headquarters involving Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and senior security officials.

The internal debate unfolded as the worst fighting since an April truce flared again. Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs on June 7 after a Hezbollah missile attack on northern Israel, and Tehran retaliated by firing missiles at Israel, the first such exchange since April. After Israel hit Iran overnight and again Monday morning, and Iran fired two rounds of missiles in return, Tehran told the Trump administration it was prepared for a ceasefire.

By Monday afternoon the fighting had paused. Iran said it would halt its offensive but warned it would launch harsher attacks if Israel carried out further hostile acts, an announcement that came minutes after Trump called for the attacks to immediately stop. Netanyahu said Israel had stopped its attacks on Iran while stopping short of acknowledging a ceasefire, and said operations in Lebanon would continue.

Inside the consultations, Netanyahu argued that Trump remains aligned with Israel’s broader aims on Iran and that a fight with Washington made no sense. “We are on the same page as Trump. He is not releasing Iran’s frozen funds, he is determined to secure the nuclear material, and he is maintaining the pressure. Why should we pick a fight with him?” he said, according to the report.

Ben Gvir pushed the opposite case, saying Israel should resist American pressure. “We need to stand our ground against Trump. We need to fight tooth and nail and make it clear that we have red lines,” he said, per Channel 12. Netanyahu reportedly suggested the minister’s stance was shaped by the coming election campaign, a charge Ben Gvir rejected.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued for concentrating Israel’s response on Hezbollah targets in Beirut, contending it would both weaken the group and reinforce Israel’s rejection of Iranian demands that Lebanon be folded into any ceasefire. “Strike hard in Beirut. That will cause Hezbollah to beg for it to stop,” he said, according to the report, adding that action in Iran carried diplomatic costs and that Israel should exploit the separation of the fronts to “turn the tables.”

The report said that after Trump urged him against further attacks on Iran on Monday afternoon, Netanyahu told officials that Israel would strike Hezbollah targets in Beirut if the group hit northern communities, even at the risk of another round of confrontation with Iran. Katz had said as much publicly earlier in the day.

Trump, for his part, has cast himself as the one reining Israel in. He told Axios that an Israeli strike was already underway and that he managed to reduce its scope, and he said he had warned Netanyahu to be very careful, signaling Israel could be left to fight alone if it escalated.

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