Top officials in Tel Aviv were shocked when President Donald Trump announced that he was not going through with an attack on Iran he planned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Last week, multiple outlets reported that Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were plotting an attack on Iranian energy infrastructure. President Trump said he backed away from a plan to escalate military operations against Iran to allow for negotiations.

“The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II,” the President wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

According to an Israeli official speaking with Channel 12 News on Sunday, Israel was surprised Trump called off the strikes and even Netanyahu found out through the Truth Social post. “For hours, we were in real uncertainty,” a senior official says. “President Trump left us in the fog. Senior officers were updated about what was happening from Trump’s social media.”

“The feeling was, they left us behind,” they added. 

Trump’s reversal caused problems for an overstretched Israeli military. “The moment we lower our alert level, it takes a lot of time to reorganize,” says a senior Israeli official. “It is frustrating to commit all our resources to one theater, and then to discover that we had been on high alert for nothing. We don’t understand what the president’s endgame is.”