Cracks are beginning to appear between the United States and Israel over the strategic objectives of the war against Iran.
President Donald Trump implicitly lambasted Israel late on Wednesday for attacking an Iranian gas field. Trump warned on social media that “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely and valuable South Pars Field [unless Iran attacks U.S. allied energy sites].” Trump also claimed — not credibly — that Israel had not notified his administration in advance of the strike. Then, on Thursday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress, “The objectives that have been laid out by the president are different from the objectives that have been laid out by the Israeli government.”
This rhetoric reflects a deeper truth. Ultimately, the U.S. and Israel share just one key objective in their war on Iran: degrading Iran’s nuclear program to the point that it cannot credibly threaten Israel. Beyond that, the two countries have their own objectives.
This was always going to be the case. No state has the exact same interests as another, no matter how close their alliance. Consider how America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, has effectively abandoned the U.S. in this crisis. Or peruse the hand-wringing excuses of America’s European allies in refusing to defend their interests against Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.
As I noted before this war began, where American strategy toward Iran must consider other global threats, such as that posed by China toward Taiwan, Israel has a singular focus on ending the Iranian regime. Currently, the two countries share a broadly united military strategy in Iran. But that unity of purpose is unlikely to hold as the war continues and new opportunities for diplomacy emerge.
This war will continue at least until April and likely longer. In the short term, Trump’s admonition of Israel shows that he wants energy targets excluded from this military campaign. Trump fears the war’s impact on the global economy in the run-up to the November midterm elections. And while Trump pledged on Thursday not to deploy troops into ground combat operations, recent military deployments are at least partly designed to allow the U.S. to seize Iran’s Kharg Island energy terminal. The Trump administration has also clearly concluded that Israeli decapitation strikes against the Iranian leadership are necessary to generate new leaders more inclined to a postwar peace accord.
But when those leaders eventually do emerge, the splits in U.S. and Israeli strategy will become more pronounced. At that point, Trump will likely focus on an agreement that sees Iran suspend its regional attacks in return for a new nuclear accord. In contrast, Israel will likely wish to maintain military strikes on Iran until the regime agrees to give up its nuclear program, relinquish any future efforts to reconstitute its ballistic missile program, and end its support for regional proxies. U.S. and Israeli strategic interests divide most pivotally on Iran’s possible descent into state failure or a prolonged civil war.
Where both countries would support a high-speed popular revolution or military coup, that (predictably) seems unlikely to occur. In the alternative, Israel wouldn’t mind Iran’s descent into drawn out civil war or state failure, being that this would complicate the regime’s ability to threaten Israel. Yet, contrary to U.S. interests, this scenario would see the U.S. “have to manage the internationally reverberating humanitarian, security, and economic effects of that state failure. It might not mean nation-building, but it would certainly mean salvage operations.”
These disagreements do not mean, as too many suggest, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu somehow tricked the U.S. into this war. Trump was clearly persuaded of his own volition that the time was opportune to launch a necessary military campaign. Whether we agree or disagree with that assessment (I disagreed), it is absurd to pretend this war is the result of some kind of Israeli conspiracy. Again, however, sovereign states ultimately act in their own individual interests.
Israel is a close American ally. In recent years, it has killed a lot of terrorists who had a lot of American bodies, brains, and limbs on their hands. Still, it is equally inaccurate to claim, as too many conservatives do, that Israel is the greatest American ally. Just as it kills many American enemies, as any FBI counterintelligence agent will admit, Israel’s Mossad intelligence service runs aggressive, albeit recruitment-centric, human intelligence operations on U.S. soil. In addition, Israel’s sustained sharing, especially under Netanyahu, of high-tech capabilities with China has strengthened the People’s Liberation Army at grave risk to American lives. Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren recognized this concern to me in 2024, stating that three successive U.S. administrations had told him “not dissimilar” things.
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To that end, the U.S. and Israel should maintain collaborative strategies on Iran as long as doing so suits their own interests. Those interests will remain broadly aligned for the next couple of weeks.
But no one should be surprised when their strategies further bisect.