Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said that there is “practically nothing left to target” in Iran and that the U.S.-Israeli war there will end “soon.” Hours later, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the war will continue “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign.”
The gap between these two statements is not a messaging problem. It is the problem. The United States and Israel are not fighting the same war.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said that there is “practically nothing left to target” in Iran and that the U.S.-Israeli war there will end “soon.” Hours later, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the war will continue “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign.”
The gap between these two statements is not a messaging problem. It is the problem. The United States and Israel are not fighting the same war.
There is an exit strategy that would allow the United States to end the war on its terms without surrendering to Israel’s agenda. Last year, when the costs of fighting the Houthis began to outweigh the benefits, Trump negotiated with the militant group to reach a bilateral cease-fire that did not include Israel or other regional actors. The United States stopped fighting; Israel and others, including Saudi Arabia and Yemen, kept going. Trump called it a win.
He should do it again.
Trump wanted a Venezuela moment in Iran, according to New York Times reporting: strike fast, decapitate the leadership, install someone friendlier, declare victory, and go home with minimal cost to the United States. He said so himself. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Trump told the Times on March 1, in a phone interview focused on Iran.
Instead, the current war is one that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as an operation to destroy Iran as a regional power, permanently. He has spoken of Israeli strikes against the Iranians “breaking their bones.” That may be Israel’s goal, but it should not be the United States’.
This divergence goes beyond military strategy. It goes to the question of what victory in Iran means. Israel has a clear answer: regime change to an allied government, possibly led by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah. The Trump administration’s position, meanwhile, has been a moving target. But regime change does not appear to be its objective. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on March 2 that “this is not a so-called regime change war.” Trump dismissed Pahlavi, saying “somebody from within, maybe, would be more appropriate.”
Israel and the United States are not operating as a coalition. They are running two separate military campaigns in the same airspace.
The cracks are apparent. When Israel struck 30 Iranian fuel depots on March 7, sending toxic black rain over Tehran, the response inside the White House was “WTF,” according to an Israeli official who spoke to Axios. A White House advisor told the news outlet that the “president doesn’t like the attack. He wants to save the oil.” And on March 18, after Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, Trump wrote on social media that Israel had “violently lashed out” and insisted that the United States “knew nothing about this particular attack.”
Even U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the man who reportedly coached Netanyahu on how to push Trump into this war, felt compelled to urge Israel to “please be cautious about what targets you select,” saying that “our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life.”
By not delineating what a successful end to the war in Iran might look like, the United States is allowing Israel to decide its outcome. Americans will pay the price for deferring to Israel’s aims, possibly for generations to come.
More than a dozen U.S. troops have already been killed in the war. Iran has struck U.S. bases across the region in retaliatory attacks. And the Arab governments that host those bases—such as Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar—are watching their countries get hit for a war that they did not choose. U.S. bases in the Middle East are becoming targets, not shields. The military presence that was supposed to buy these countries security is inviting their destruction instead. These shifts could harm alliances in the Persian Gulf, which U.S. officials across political parties have hailed as essential to protecting Washington’s interests.
Beyond the region, Trump has asked long-standing U.S. allies to absorb economic shocks and political consequences for a war that many opposed from the beginning. Spain refused to allow the United States to use its bases to launch attacks on Iran. Major allies, including Australia, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom, have said they will not take part in operations to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. Allies do not forget when they bear the costs of a war they did not choose. Some of that damage will take decades to repair. Some of it may never be repaired.
The economic damage caused by the war is compounding by the day. Oil prices have surged beyond $110 a barrel at points, and the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed. American consumers are paying more for gas and other goods.
The war was launched illegally and has already led to the commission of apparent war crimes, such as the Feb. 28 attack on a school in the Iranian town of Minab that killed at least 168 people, most of them children. If an international investigation confirms Washington’s responsibility, that could lead U.S. officials and forces to face criminal prosecutions around the globe. As a party to the armed conflict, U.S. forces could also be jointly liable for any laws-of-war violations committed by Israeli forces and held criminally responsible if Israeli forces are convicted of war crimes.
Even without the involvement of the International Criminal Court—to which the United States is not a party—U.S. authorities and personnel could face prosecution in courts around the world under the principle of universal jurisdiction. At least a dozen countries authorize their courts to try war crimes regardless of where the crime occurred or who committed it. U.S. officials or military personnel traveling abroad may one day find that out firsthand.
Russia and China are counting every missile interceptor that the United States fires to defend against Iranian counterattacks. Former CIA Director David Petraeus calls it the “missile math”: how many interceptors remain versus how many Iranian launchers survive. The United States has already burned through a significant share of its THAAD and Patriot stockpiles. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies warn that every week at this pace deepens a readiness deficit that the U.S. defense industry “cannot quickly erase.”
An Iranian Shahed drone may cost as little as roughly $7,000 to build. A THAAD interceptor missile costs $12 million. Every day that this war continues, Washington trades away its Pacific readiness.
Netanyahu has his reasons for wanting this war to continue. He has been dreaming of it for decades. But those are his reasons, not Trump’s. The United States should not front or bankroll a campaign whose goals it does not share. It will, however, own the conflict for as long as it continues.
Trump has demonstrated that he can walk away from a fight when the strategic calculus changes. The Houthi cease-fire was messy and imperfect, but it held. A cease-fire with Iran—one that does not necessitate Israel’s participation and does not require anyone to concede defeat—is available right now.
The exit is there. Trump should take it.
