Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump launched the most integrated U.S.-Israeli military campaign in history - but they appear to be fighting toward different endpoints. Netanyahu has made clear he wants to create conditions for regime change in Tehran. Trump has intermittently echoed those calls but signaled openness to working with remnants of the Iranian regime, much as he did in Venezuela after the removal of Nicolas Maduro.
Most Israelis believe the June 2025 12-day war "ended too soon" and that the Iranian threat cannot be eliminated as long as the Islamic Republic persists, according to a Foreign Affairs analysis by Dana Stroul, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, as reported by "Hvylya".
Trump faces a different calculus. Iran is targeting civilian infrastructure and energy installations across the Gulf, threatening countries whose leaders the president counts as key allies. As U.S. casualties rise and the financial costs of Operation Epic Fury mount, Trump "may seek an off-ramp short of full regime change in Tehran," Stroul writes. Such an outcome would "diminish the immediate threat posed by Iran but leave the region in a holding pattern."
The divergence matters because neither leader is well positioned to bridge it. Stroul argues that both Trump and Netanyahu "have shown themselves to be particularly unwilling to reach beyond their bases and build consensus." Both face critical upcoming elections and are politically vulnerable - making neither likely to take the difficult steps needed to align their strategies or communicate a coherent post-war vision.
The risk, according to Stroul, is that a "failure of political leadership may accelerate the breakdown of an effective military collaboration" - undermining the very partnership that battlefield success could have cemented. The irony is sharp: the closest military cooperation in the history of the alliance may end up weakening it.
Also read: Not Just Regime Change: What Israel Really Wants in Iran, According to Levy