When Israeli and American jets joined forces to attack Iran, it was a departure for both countries. The two had grown increasingly aligned over more than three-quarters of a century, but their militaries had never mounted a campaign together. This time, they were synchronized on every aspect: planning, execution, command and control, intelligence and damage assessments.
They were also newly connected in another way. The Israeli military has remained on a war footing for generations. Soldiers sometimes attack the same targets their fathers and grandfathers did. The reason is clear. Israel’s political and military leaders have focused on many of the same challenges for decades and often see force as the only available option. Seeing no near-term solutions, Israel’s political and military leaders have adopted an approach they describe as mowing the grass. That is, they attack adversaries, and when the adversary rebuilds, Israel merely attacks again.
The United States is different. Americans see themselves as problem solvers, inclined to use their country’s might and its broad policy tool kit to fix things once and for all and then move on to the next problem. They were particularly ready, after more than two decades of seemingly endless wars in the Middle East and beyond, to stop fighting abroad and focus on solving problems at home.
In the case of Iran, President Trump has adopted the Israeli approach. He has returned to a country he helped attack in June and admitted that after current operations end, he may need to return again and again. That threatens to embed the United States in a series of unlimited military strikes premised on unrelenting hostility and mutual threat.
It’s not that the challenges Iran poses are easy to fix. The regime has remained intent on threatening its neighbors, directly and through proxies. It appears more committed than ever to its nuclear program. Combined with its paranoia and its weakness, these characteristics make it an especially hard problem to solve, militarily, diplomatically or otherwise.
That’s part of what brought the United States even closer to Israel. The other big driver was rapprochement between Jerusalem and the Arab world. The Abraham Accords in late 2020 were designed to counter Iran by normalizing relations between Israel and Arab governments, with the United States acting as connective tissue. Once those former enemies found common cause, it made sense for them to collaborate under the same military umbrella. Four months after the Abraham Accords were signed and days before the first Trump administration ended, Israel began coordinating its military operations with U.S. Central Command, or Centcom after having previously been integrated into the military’s Europe-based command.
Once Israel was integrated into Centcom, U.S. and Israeli officers responsible for the Middle East planned together and trained together, and they learned to operate together. Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the Centcom commander who retired in August, reportedly visited Israel 40 times. When the bombs started flying in Iran, Israeli and U.S. soldiers worked more closely together than any other American partner has since the British in World War II.
This close alignment comes with costs that are not fully appreciated. The United States has aligned with Israeli war aims — Israeli Embassy briefers in Washington speak of setting the conditions for the collapse of the regime — without a clear strategy to accomplish them. America’s stated war aims have varied throughout the conflict, creating confusion as to what the United States is trying to do and what any Iranian leadership can do to end the fighting.
The United States has left allies and partners around the world feeling they are paying the price for what they see as an unnecessary and ill-considered war. Some are having their infrastructure attacked, energy prices are skyrocketing, and many fear acts of terrorism. Violence in the Persian Gulf leaves neighbors bracing for what comes next, from refugee flows to proxy battles settled on their soil. They have been hellbent on economic diversification in the face of energy transition. Bringing in money and talent will be harder now. The war against Iran may help them in the long run but not for a while.
And with this action, the United States may be planting the seeds of more problems. Countries around the world learned to live with U.S. military and economic dominance because they saw Washington as mostly benign and predictable, even if they weren’t closely aligned with American interests. A United States that behaves more like Israel, lashing out at any country it wishes to at any time (and with a global reach), is a completely different problem for them.
Governments in the Middle East, Europe and Asia that had grown more accommodating toward Israel in recent years now may grow more resentful of what it has done and what it has persuaded America to do. In the United States — where criticism of Israel is growing on both the left and the right, seen especially in the argument that Jerusalem had excessive influence over the decision to go to war — a foreign policy liability may turn into a domestic political one. That would accelerate the deterioration of support for Israel among the citizenry of its most important ally.
It is true that Mr. Trump has squeezed Israel, particularly in insisting on a Gaza cease-fire last October in exchange for the return of Israeli hostages. Follow-up has been slow, however, and the White House has appeared no less closely aligned with Israel on security issues, peacekeeping, recovery and reconstruction.
That close alignment is not new, but the context is. While generations of U.S. administrations have been deeply sympathetic to Israel, they maintained a firewall between Israeli military operations and U.S. strategy in the Middle East. In the past, U.S. governments kept out of Israel’s fights, supporting but also restraining it. That helped Israel lock in diplomatic gains from its military actions. It was a win-win.
It is too early to tell how or when the war with Iran will end. Iran’s new leaders seem unbowed and perhaps even more radical. Their response to suffering is to make others suffer, too, fighting with whatever tools they can find.
By fully joining a partner that is reconciled to endlessly fighting, the United States has given up its most valuable role in the Middle East: the outside power with a wide array of economic and diplomatic tools that Israel needs precisely because it stands apart.
What was once a win-win has the markings of a lose-lose. Future administrations may find themselves spending years picking up the pieces of an alliance that they conclude grew too close.
Jon B. Alterman is an expert in global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Before joining it in 2002, he served on the policy planning staff at the State Department.
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