At the beginning of this week, a lot of people were already sensing that this round of the war was coming to an end. They were right. But they were also wrong.
On Tuesday, when President Donald Trump started posting about annihilating Iranian civilization, his rhetoric was read by most people—sorry, most people in my social circle of Israeli analysts—as so over the top that it didn’t actually constitute a coherent threat. It was more likely an attempt to set the narrative of a ceasefire he knew was coming, giving the ability to claim the ceasefire was the result of his threat. But for all its enthusiasm and bold promises that Iran would stop enriching uranium, Trump’s ceasefire announcement on Tuesday was far less than what it appeared.
In Israel, it caused a kind of whiplash. It was an American end to major operations (at least for now) just when the war planners had prepared the start of a major escalation against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)–owned infrastructures, including in Iran’s energy sector.
It was the moment, in other words, when Israeli and American interests diverged. Until Tuesday, Israel and America were fighting an overlapping war with almost entirely overlapping interests. But the overlap wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t going to last. The two countries’ interests are not identical. Israel is threatened enough to be willing to see this through to the end of the regime, even at great short-term cost to Iranians and Israelis—and global energy markets. Israel is small, within missile range, and thus highly sensitive to the kind of annihilationist rhetoric and ideology in which the Iranian regime traffics. This is why support for the war, even after six weeks of Iranian missile fire, remains surprisingly high among Israelis. The Iranian threat, though much diminished by the war, still looms large.
