Israel launched a major attack on an Iranian gas field this week, prompting retaliation by Iran against Gulf States, a threat to global energy supplies and a surge in fuel prices. President Trump first insisted the United States “knew nothing about” the strike, then later backtracked and said he warned Israel against attacking the complex.
His attempt to distance his administration from the strike underscored the diverging aims of the United States and Israel as their war against Iran grinds on.
As a superpower with global responsibilities, the United States cares deeply about global energy supplies and the safety of its Persian Gulf allies. And with crucial midterm elections later this year, the Trump Administration cares deeply about the rising price of gasoline in the United States.
But as a regional power, Israel has different strategic aims and more narrow concerns, analysts and former officials say. Israel has its own natural gas, little dependency on the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has a chokehold on the transport of fuel, and no responsibility for the free flow of global trade. The stakes for Israel are higher than for the United States, since it sees Iran, sworn to the destruction of Israel, as a clear danger, both from its nuclear program and especially from its ballistic missiles.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment, said: “We are a global power and they are a regional one. So their threat assessments create a different set of objectives than ours.”
That divergence is inevitable, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. Not only are their goals fundamentally different, she said, but “the costs the two sides can bear are even more different, especially over time.”
Washington is focused much more now on the problem of the Strait of Hormuz, she said, since a lengthy closure could mean a sustained global recession and higher fuel prices.
“Israel doesn’t care as much about this,” she said. “They have a set of strategic objectives and believe they are succeeding, and they’re not as price sensitive as the White House. They are more willing to weather the storm and try to finish the job.”
Israel is more determined than Washington to change the regime in Iran, dismantling the Islamic republic and its ballistic missile program, and to degrade Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy force in southern Lebanon, to the point that it cannot threaten Israel again for many years. Israel is also more amenable, analysts said, to the possibility of state collapse and chaos in Iran than Washington appears to be.
Having been on a war footing since Hamas attacked it from Gaza in October 2023, Israel is more willing to bear the costs in casualties and economic damage than the United States is likely to be. It sees an extraordinary opportunity to clobber Iran with American help, and it is likely to want to continue the war longer than President Trump, these analysts said.
So the attack on Iran’s South Pars facility, from which Iran gets most of its natural gas for domestic consumption, was a logical move for Israel, as was an earlier bombing attack on Iranian fuel depots, which Washington also criticized privately, analysts and officials say.
Mr. Trump’s strong initial response to the South Pars strike — he said that Israel had “violently lashed out” at the gas field — was the reaction of a global power, prompted by Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Qatari and Saudi natural gas production facilities.
Either way, Mr. Trump’s fury will have an impact in Israel, where Mr. Netanyahu, who must conduct elections by October, cares deeply about keeping the American president and the U.S. military on his side.
As a result, Israel will likely feel intense pressure to heed his orders to stop hitting Iran’s gas fields and even to stop the war.
At some point, said Mr. Miller of the Carnegie Endowment: “Netanyahu’s interests in creating some different Iranian reality will confront Trump’s need to stop. And when Trump needs to say ‘stop,’ Netanyahu will reluctantly do so.”
On a superficial level the two countries started with common goals of regime change and military dismantlement, including Iran’s nuclear program, said Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. But Mr. Trump has spoken of a Venezuela-like solution, with the regime still in place albeit with people at the top whom the U.S. can control, and Israel has a much higher bar for a different leadership in Iran, he said.
On a secondary level, Israel is focused on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the pillars of the regime, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia. The United States, Mr. Sachs said, is far more focused on Iran’s short-range missiles and drones that can hit the Gulf, as well as its naval capacity. Most immediately, the need is to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“The price of oil, pressure from the Gulf States and even the international markets matter to Israel, but far less than to the U.S.,” he said. But Israel is sensitive to those concerns to the degree that they influence Mr. Trump, he added.
Even if there is no regime change, Mr. Sachs said, Iran would be much weaker and it would be easier for Israel to apply “forceful containment,” a more elegant term for intermittent attacks. But the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all key American allies, do not want a broken Iran that creates migration flows and more terrorism.
The broader U.S. strategic interests include global energy markets, the Strait of Hormuz, how many munitions the U.S. is expending, the extended deployments of the Navy and aircrews, the impact on the Ukraine war and how it affects U.S. readiness in the Asia-Pacific, said Daniel Shapiro, a former Pentagon official and former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
“These are not necessarily prominent in the minds of Israelis or Netanyahu. Most Israelis simply hope for the demise of their nemesis.”
The two countries do share one crucial concern that has not dissipated: the fate of the 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that would be enough in principle to build 10 nuclear weapons, should Iran pursue that path. While much of the uranium may be buried under the rubble of the June attacks on Isfahan, no one knows for sure, said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence officer at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
“This is the holy grail,” he said. But how that uranium can be destroyed or secured remains unclear, which is why some analysts still see the war ending in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, even with a far weakened regime in Tehran.
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, fears too rapid a conclusion. “If you resort to military force, which is not always the right thing to do, you should play to win,” he said. “Attempts to fight limited wars for limited purposes usually end up with the worst of all worlds.”
Whatever Israel prefers, he said, “it comes down to whether Trump has the political will and stomach to stay the course or not.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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