The Dictatorship
Israel’s fuel depot strikes caught Trump by surprise. Here’s why that matters.
Israel struck 30 fuel depots in Tehran on Saturday. The attacks sent giant fireballs and colossal towers of smoke into the air, which obscured the sun and blanketed Iran’s capital of around 10 million people. Black raindrops fell in the capital the following day, and some residents woke up with burning pain in their throats and eyes. Iranian officials warned that the precipitation contained toxic compounds.
The strikes were captured in haunting photographs in international media — and the United States wasn’t happy.
This fissure highlights how the U.S. and Israel have different approaches to and interests in the war in Iran.
Axios, citing a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge of the matter, reported that the strikes “went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance” and sparked “the first significant disagreement” between the two countries.
“The U.S. is concerned Israeli strikes on infrastructure that serves ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society to support the regime and driving up oil prices,” Axios reported. (The White House and the IDF didn’t offer comment to Axios on their reportedly differing attitudes toward the strikes.)
There was also a concern about economic optics. A Trump adviser told Axios that President Donald Trump “doesn’t like” the attack and said there was a concern that it “reminds” people of higher gas prices.
Make no mistake, there is no sign that the Trump administration — which has provided no coherent explanation for its war of aggression and appears to have been behind a Tomahawk cruise missile strike that killed scores of children at a girl’s elementary school — is concerned about the welfare of the Iranian people. But this fissure highlights how the U.S. and Israel have different approaches to and interests in the war in Iran — and how easily Trump could get swept in Israel’s greater willingness to fight a prolonged war.
While Trump initially indicated he desired regime change in Iran, he has since softened his tone and suggested, among other things, that he’s open to diplomacy and a Venezuela-style deal in which Trump would find more cooperative leaders to work with in Iran and keep most of the government intact. While Trump continues to zig and zag unpredictably on describing his objectives in Iran, it’s fair to say he is amenable to exiting the war with Iran without regime change.
By contrast, Israel is consistently all in on regime change. Israel views Iran and the proxies it backs — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza — as an existential threat, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers this a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East and eradicate an archnemesis. There is a “now or never” attitude underpinning his strikes.
These diverging attitudes can be seen in the way that Israel and the U.S. are prioritizing different targets. As Justin Leopold-Cohen and Ryan Brobst of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power pointed out in a recent analysis, “Israel has prioritized hitting regime officials and military leaders, while the US has taken responsibility for degrading the Iranian Navy and is striking hardened targets with Tehran’s bomber fleet.” They noted that the different target priorities may be explained by their differing objectives in the war.
Here’s a vivid example of how Israel’s laser focus on regime change puts it at odds with the U.S.’s more flexible outlook: As The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reportedon the first day of the war Israel targeted a “group of Iranian officials which the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate than their bosses, and who might help bring a swift end to the conflict.” In other words, Israel’s effort to clean house entirely also foreclosed a perceived potential Venezuela-style pathway for Trump.
Israel’s strikes on the fuel depots also underscores how Israel is willing to take risky and aggressive actions to topple Iran’s power structure and destabilize its economy and society. While the U.S. cited the strikes as something that might give life to pro-regime resistance, it seems plausible that Israel’s longer time horizon and appetite for regime change explains its willingness to hit harder.
These differing attitudes have two primary sources. One is geopolitics: Israel is striving for regional hegemony, and Iran is its only serious rival in the Middle East. While Iran is not close to building a nuclear weaponIran’s ballistic missiles and its proxies do pose a real threat to Israel’s security and allow it to contest Israeli domination of the region. By contrast, Iran can’t hit the U.S. with its missiles or threaten U.S. security by funding groups like Hezbollah. Yes, Iran can hit U.S. military bases in the Middle East, but U.S. military supremacy over Iran is unambiguous, and Iran has not shown an appetite for picking a fight with the U.S. the way it has with Israel.
The other factor is politics. The Israeli public is overwhelmingly supportive of the war on Iran, and Netanyahu, who is trailing in the polls ahead of an election this yearonce again appears to see war as a way to try to bolster his popularity, secure his legacy and delay his long-running legal troubles. Meanwhile in the U.S., support for the war on Iran is strikingly lowand Trump is already constantly seeking to assure that costs associated with the war, such as high oil prices, will be short term. Trump knows that a quagmire would undermine one of the central themes of all three of his presidential campaigns — avoiding forever wars.
What’s most concerning is that Trump’s failure to set clear goals could mean he goes along with Israel’s objectives without even trying to do so. Without clear criteria for success, Trump’s operation is vulnerable to mission creep. And without attentiveness to or knowledge of the region, Trump may allow Israel to set the tone of the situation on the ground. Netanyahu has every incentive to make sure it all drifts in a direction that satisfies his goals.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.