President Trump’s suggestions that the war with Iran might soon be over are bringing a new problem to the fore: Israel and the U.S. have different ideas on when to end the conflict and under what conditions.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have spoken nearly every day since the war began, sometimes more than once a day. Netanyahu has also held conversations with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and envoy for Iran. All those talks center on the current state of the war and how to end it, the U.S. officials said, as both countries try to bridge their differences in real time.
There is some concern among White House officials that Israel wants the war to last after the U.S. expresses its desire to end the bombing campaign, the officials said. U.S. and Israeli officials say the Israeli message is it will stop its campaign in Iran whenever U.S. involvement stops. Trump has told aides he wants to end the war on his terms and, after brokering a cease-fire in last year’s 12-day war, believes he can put a stop to the fighting when he wants, U.S. officials said.
“The end of America’s involvement in this conflict will ultimately be determined by the commander in chief, when he feels the military objectives are fully met, and the threat of the rogue Iranian regime has been completely demolished,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Despite their close coordination, differences in the Israeli and American approaches are emerging, with Israel continuing to track and kill top Iranian officials while broadening its range of targets to include the country’s oil industry as it tries to force a change in leadership.
The U.S. also told Israel Monday that the administration was “not happy” with the attacks on Iranian energy facilities and told Israel not to do it again unless approved by Washington, according to U.S. sources.
Axios earlier reported that the U.S. asked Israel to halt strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
And hours after Trump told a reporter the military campaign was “very complete, pretty much,” Netanyahu reiterated his maximalist goals for the war.
“Our aspiration is to enable the Iranian people to cast off the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, it is up to them,” Netanyahu said Tuesday. “There is no doubt that through the actions taken so far, we are breaking their bones and we are still active.”
The different priorities in the air campaign were evident at the start. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told Congress last week that the airstrike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was part of a series of “Israeli operations.” Colby contrasted the Israeli attack with the “scoped and reasonable” objectives the U.S. was pursuing by focusing its strikes on Iran’s missiles, drones and navy.
The U.S. administration has shifted its stated goals from the outset. Trump had initially called for regime change in Tehran, but told reporters Monday that the U.S. had already achieved most of its military goals, saying, “We’re way ahead of schedule.”
Like the U.S. military and senior Pentagon officials, Rubio has articulated a more limited set of goals, including setting back Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Air power alone has never removed a foreign government from power, a fact that U.S. military planners and analysts acknowledge.
The Pentagon also acknowledged the divergent approaches to the air campaign in a briefing Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth said the Israeli military has been a good partner but added, “Where they have different objectives, they have pursued them.” He was responding to a question about Israel’s strikes on fuel depots near Tehran, which Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and Trump ally, has criticized as a move that may alienate the Iranian public.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has shown some resilience in recent days, selecting a new supreme leader and extending its blockade of Persian Gulf oil.
“Trump may be learning the oldest lesson of human conflicts: It is much easier to start a war than to end one,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at International Crisis Group. “By hinting at stopping the bombing without a credible diplomatic off-ramp, he risks creating the worst of both worlds—Iran has every incentive to keep using its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, while Israel may see no reason to stop its own campaign.”
The growing economic damage from the war is further diverging U.S. and Israeli interests.
Netanyahu has for years called for the removal of the Iranian regime and spoken about the threat posed by the country’s nuclear program to Israel. After a series of successful military operations against Iran’s allies in the region, he saw an opening last year, launching a 12-day war that further set back Iran militarily.
While the U.S. shares that goal, it has a broader set of interests in the region, including its role as the main military partner of the energy-rich Gulf states, some of which are now seeing their oil-and-gas exports bottled up by Iran and their cities and industrial infrastructure under attack.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which pushed oil above $100 a barrel this week, is a sign that turmoil leashed by the conflict could require yet another set of military solutions.
Trump on Monday said that “if needed” the U.S. Navy could escort oil tankers through the strait, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil typically passes. That could keep the U.S. in the conflict longer than planned. On Monday, Trump threatened an escalation of attacks to unblock the channel, saying on Truth Social that the U.S. would bomb targets that “will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again—Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them.”
Israel is hoping the U.S. stays in the fight longer.
“Bibi’s dream and I think Israel’s dream for decades is a joint war to topple the Islamic Republic. But to rely on Trump for anything is always a dubious undertaking,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national-security adviser in Israel and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
The two leaders are speaking to very different domestic audiences, with public polling revealing gaps between the two countries.
A poll conducted by the INSS in early March showed 82% of Israelis support the war. The issue is of utmost importance to Netanyahu, who is likely betting on a boost in polling from the war in the lead-up to Israeli elections expected later this year.
The Israeli public is also exposed to Iran’s missile threat in a way that Americans aren’t. It takes about nine minutes for a ballistic missile to fly from Iran to Israel, but Tehran doesn’t have the capability to strike the American homeland with a long-range missile. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency projected in May that Iran could deploy as many as 60 ocean-spanning missiles by 2035 if it decided to adapt a system it has been developing for putting satellites into low-Earth orbit for intercontinental ballistic missiles instead.
Israel is well aware that Trump could end the war at any moment and is fighting as if every day is the last, said a person briefed on the operation. Israel wants more time, but is aware of the pressures Trump is facing at home to end the war, the person said.
The Trump administration’s shifting objectives have damped public backing for the war in the U.S., with a range of opinion polls showing that a minority supports it. Trump is facing criticism from some Democrats and the right of his party, who want him to pursue a more isolationist vision of his foreign policy. He initially campaigned against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and in years past promised to end America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East.
Some of Trump’s advisers have privately urged him to look for an exit plan amid spiking oil prices and concerns that a lengthy conflict could spark political backlash, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said he is likely to travel to Israel next week to coordinate with Israeli leaders on the continuing military campaign in Iran.
Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com, Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com