Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, is worried about the U.S.-Israel relationship. He sees Israeli and American objectives in the current war on Iran diverging. He sees Donald Trump’s commitment to regime change in Iran faltering, and he calls this “…the first – worrying – daylight between the two countries.”
In Freilich’s view, American and Israeli objectives in this war were united at the outset. Those objectives, he wrote, included: “toppling the Iranian regime, severely downgrading Iran’s missile capability for a protracted period, completing the destruction of the nuclear program, and further weakening Iran’s regional proxies.”
Setting aside the bogus issue of Iran’s nuclear program—which has not been in pursuit of a nuclear weapon since at least 2003—the other three might be shared objectives, but none of them remotely constitute an American interest so compelling that this war, with all of its global risks and consequences, was necessary.
What Freilich fails to note is that, while the Trump administration may have foolishly adopted similar goals to Israel in this war, American and Israeli interests in it were always very different, by any measure.
But Freilich is right to be worried. Israel’s standing in the American public’s view has soured badly, and now, a second consecutive American president is staring at huge political losses due to his blind support of monstrous, unpopular Israeli policies.
Israel wanted this war to rid itself of the one state in the region that has been able to challenge its agenda in any substantive way. The United States shares that goal, but places a different emphasis on it.
For the U.S., Iran has been a symbol of anti-Americanism, and a global villain since 1979. The so-called “leading state sponsor of terrorism” is a useful political target, but it hardly poses a real threat to the United States from the other side of the world.
Israel sees Iran as the engine that drives opposition to its regional ambitions and provides the backing—and, not incidentally, the weapons—for the Palestinian armed resistance.
The old cliché about there being “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israel on security policy stands in contradiction to the different threat levels Iran poses to each country. Unless, of course, one decides that it is legitimate to base American policy on what is best for Israel, regardless of the consequences for the U.S. Most Americans do not hold that view.
The idea that American and Israeli interests are the same withers even further when we examine the different visions for the Middle East region. The U.S. generally wants stability. That keeps markets calm and maintains the flow of Middle Eastern resources out of the region and into western corporate hands.
But Israel seeks regional hegemony, not through partnerships, but through force and threats. This is apparent in its refusal to engage diplomatically with the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (which offered full normalization with entire Arab League in exchange for Israel accepting a deal based on the parameters of the two-state solution), and its refusal to seriously consider accommodation on the issue of its occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians in exchange for a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia. Only when an Arab state essentially makes peace without Israel giving ground on Palestinian rights will Israel accept a peace deal. That was the case with Egypt, Jordan, and the most recent “Abraham Accords” agreements.
Israel does not prioritize regional stability. On the contrary, its entire existence is predicated on the insecurity of its Jewish citizens and the sympathy that insecurity garners from supporters—Jewish and non-Jewish—around the world.
As a result, Israel’s objectives, strategies, tactics, and specific decisions do not always line up well with those of the United States.
Threatening Iranian oil production
The devotion to aggression and instability go beyond Benjamin Netanyahu and his right wing compatriots. It includes major opposition figures as well.
Yair Lapid, who enjoys a generally warm relationship with the Democratic Party in the U.S. that Netanyahu has worked so successfully to alienate, called for a huge assault on Iran’s oil infrastructure last weekend.
Lapid tweeted, “Israel must destroy all the Iranian oil fields and energy industry on Kharg Island, that’s what will crush the Iranian economy and overthrow the regime.”
Kharg Island is the major source of Iran’s oil exports. Destroying it would send the already crippled Iranian economy into a tailspin it would take decades to recover from, if it ever did. It would also be a major blow to the world’s long term supply of oil.
This did not find favor in Washington. Shortly after Lapid’s tweet, Israel tested the American response to an attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure by striking oil refineries in Tehran, filling the air with toxins for dozens of miles around.
The U.S. response was quick and clear. Lindsey Graham, in a rare criticism of Israel, rebuked Tel Aviv, tweeting, “Please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
We can summarily dismiss the notion that Graham, a long time champion of sanctions and war on Iran, cares at all about the people there. Graham was clearly speaking on Trump’s behalf here, and sending a message to Israel about the need to avoid destroying Iran’s oil wealth.
But Netanyahu and Israeli leadership more broadly are nothing if not tactical. They surely understand that destroying Iran’s oil fields would not only cripple the Islamic Republic, but it would also make it very difficult for any government, no matter how friendly to the west, to rebuild Iran’s economy.
That is not a recipe for the stability that Trump, and his allies in the Gulf monarchies, desire. That’s a recipe for chaos and a failed state. Much smaller states in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq produced some of the most radical groups and an enormous amount of regional conflict as a result of war ripping their governments apart. A failed Iran would be much worse.
That does not serve American interests, and leads to another major divergence of interests. This was on display when Trump discussed finding someone in Iran he considered “a good leader” in Iran while Israeli defense Minister Israel Katz bluntly stated that no matter who Iran chose, Israel would mark them for assassination.
Both countries wanted a regime change war, but the visions for how that would come about were not the same.
Not the ending Israel wants
Trump has been sending maddeningly mixed messages about the war. On Monday, he said the U.S. is “getting very close to finishing” the war, but he also indicated that “we’re going to go further.” Last week, he said the goal was Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” which is clearly unattainable.
Even Netanyahu would surely not want to try to predict where the mercurial, and often confused and ill-informed, American president will land on ending the war. But if it ends soon, whether Israel or the United States want to admit it publicly or not, this war will have been a dismal failure.
Yes, Iran will have suffered another setback, lost many innocent lives, and taken a great deal of damage if the war were to end now.
But it will also emerge with a leader in Mojtaba Khamenei who will both honor much of his father’s legacy and act in a more hardline manner. Mojtaba is very close to the Revolutionary Guard, and opposes engagement with the west, preferring a more militant stance.
Whatever the merits of his positions may be, Mojtaba Khamenei’s argument has been bolstered by American betrayal in twice launching surprise attacks on Iran when negotiations were not only ongoing but making progress.
Mojtaba, who was known to have been a key force behind the rise of Mahmoud Ahmidenijad to the Iranian presidency in 2005, lost his wife, one of his children, his mother, and one of his sisters as well as his father in the recent American and Israeli attacks. He is not likely to be inclined toward sympathy for Israeli or American concerns.
Iran will rebuild its missile stockpile and will, even more easily, replenish its supply of drones. Under Mojtaba Khamenei it will certainly reinforce its relationships with the various pro-Iran militias in the region.
Finally, much of the support for developing a nuclear weapon came from the IRGC. The fatwa from Ali Khamenei kept this from becoming more than a theoretical debate publicly and it is not known what Mojtaba’s view is on this question. But he now has the power to reverse his father’s fatwa, and the attacks by the nuclear-armed U.S. and Israel strongly bolster the logic that says Iran cannot deter future attacks without nuclear weapons. The example of North Korea, weighed against the examples of Iraq and Libya, are strong arguments.
Thus, from Israel’s point of view, ending the war now is a frightening prospect. The new Supreme Leader would be emboldened as well by the fact that the Iranian state structure remained fully intact throughout this massive bombardment. The anti-government sentiment that led to the massive protests in Iran would still be there, and, given the additional strain on the economy, might even grow. But they will be much more vulnerable to accusations of emboldening the United States to strike Iran, especially given how heavily both Trump and Netanyahu leaned on the “liberate the people of Iran from the Islamic Republic” rhetoric leading up to, and even during the war.
Israel knows they need to destroy the Iranian government to win this war. But they are not going to be able to do it from the air. And they certainly cannot do it without the United States’ direct participation; that is why they had not struck Iran before. But the resistance in the U.S. to a ground invasion is, if anything, even stronger than it was before the war was started.
There was never a good reason for the United States to start this war. There is no outcome, even in the best case scenario for American war planners, that any U.S. interest is enhanced. Even if the regime change operation was successful, the damage to the U.S.’ standing in the world, the impact on the global economy, and the unpredictability in the Gulf will negate whatever staged victory lap Trump can take.
The same can’t be said for Netanyahu. If Iran is destroyed as a functioning country, the regional instability serves Netanyahu’s position very well. If the current government is toppled, whether by the war or in its aftermath, there will still be lingering instability but Israel’s major regional rival will be gone.
But right now, the trajectory of the war is not what Netanyahu wants. Iran is successfully raising the cost of attacking it, and, if the Islamic Republic weathers this storm, the likelihood of future American military action will be significantly diminished. That’s meaningful, considering how every prior American president refused to engage in this misadventure.
If Trump chooses the exit ramp, whether he claims victory or not, Iran will still have its missiles, its regional partners, its oil, and an even more hardline Supreme Leader who has been given every reason in the world to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Trump can hide much of that and declare victory. But even with the censorship that has gotten much worse in Israel, Netanyahu will not be able to spin this as a win.
Trump is losing ground politically because of this war, and it is in his interest to end it. Netanyahu needs it to go on long enough to bring Iran to the breaking point, or, failing that, to sow as much destruction there as possible.
American and Israeli interests, contrary to Freilich’s implications, were not the same to start this war. They are even more divergent now.