Trump and Netanyahu clash over how and when to end the war

Both leaders agreed to launch the offensive against Iran on February 28. “I had an excellent conversation with Bibi; we are on the same wavelength“Trump said that day.

However, after almost a week of conflict, it seems that they are having difficulty clearly defining some objectives common goals and the time horizon they consider necessary to achieve them.

From the beginning, Netanyahu has presented the offensive as the culmination of a political and military crusade against what he describes as the “existential threat” posed to Israel by the ayatollah regime and its nuclear program. For the Israeli prime minister, the war is not limited to stopping specific military capabilities, but to ending the power that governs in Tehran. That is why Netanyahu has even gone so far as to ask the Iranians who are rebelling and “take the reins of your destiny.”

From Washington, however, the message has been much more diffuse. Trump and his cabinet have been alternating explanations: prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, destroy its missile capacity, provoke a regime change, respond to an alleged imminent attack, avenge an assassination attempt… They have also not been clear about the next steps: there was talk of “four or five weeks” and of “the necessary time”then the idea was reiterated that it was not “an endless war” like that of Iraq, but the option of deploying boots on the ground was put on the table.

Politically, that ambiguity gives the American president room to maneuver. Strategically, however, the lack of a clear objective could become at its greatest weakness. “If you don’t have a clear objective, it is very difficult for the military to plan or calculate ammunition, for example,” warned retired general Ben Hodges, former commander of the United States Army in Europe, in conversation with this newspaper.

“In every war, The objectives are what set the direction of the campaign“he pointed out The Economist in a report in which he talks about “a war without strategy.” But above all, it is the objectives that determine when the operation can be terminated and complicate or not popular support. And it is precisely there where the asymmetry between Israel and the United States seems evident.

Israel has been preparing for decades for a possible direct confrontation with the Iranian regime. A preparation that is reflected in citizen support for the one baptized by the Israeli Army as Operation Roaring Lion. In fact, According to the Israel Democracy Institute, 93% of Israeli Jews support the intervention and a majority believe it should continue until the threat from the Iranian regime is completely neutralized.

In the United States, on the other hand, citizens were barely warned that a conflict was going to break out that threatened to extend over time, in a country where “endless wars” like Iraq or Afghanistan are synonymous with political exhaustion. And especially because Trump insisted time and time again that he was not going to lead his country into an endless conflict.

Hence, various polls carried out in recent months indicate the war against Iran as deeply unpopular. According to a CNN poll, six in ten Americans disapprove of military actions against the Islamic Republic, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates that only one in four supports the attacks.

Donald Trump faces increasing internal pressures (also within his own party) as The war with Iran continues and it expands. And the crisis is also already hitting the economy, Trump’s central priority. The interruption of maritime transport by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuzthrough which 20% of the hydrocarbons consumed in the world pass, has caused an increase in the price of crude oil.

In this sense, analysts such as Dan Shapiroformer US ambassador to Israel and member of the Atlantic Council think tank they point out in an interview with Reutersthat if the political and economic cost soars, Trump could opt for an early exit from the war, even if Netanyahu considers that the strategic objective has not yet been met.

In this line, Israeli officials have privately expressed to the Financial Times their concern that Trump, more concerned about the economy and the impact the conflict is having on its allies in the Persian Gulfwill remain committed to seeing the campaign through to the end.

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For Netanyahu, however, who faces accusations of corruption and enormous political attrition since his war in Gaza, the war is an opportunity to survive politically. As Udi Sommer, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University, explained to the British agency, “if he succeeds, relatively quickly, it will work a lot in his favor as a protector of Israel and as someone who has built a particularly successful relationship with Washington.”

However, analyst Amotz Asa-el, from the Shalom Hartman Institute, appeared in conversation with Reuters skeptical of the Israeli president’s capacity for resistance and maintained that a military victory in Iran would not erase internal problems. “The events of the last three years have been so traumatic, so dramatic and so repugnant to that decisive vote that I do not believe that any kind of salvation in Iran can compensate for this,” he warned.