The U.S. and Israel’s diverging interests will prolong the war, but Iran will determine its outcome

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has been urging U.S. President Donald Trump to press on in his war on Iran. The claim is that the Saudis are concerned that if the war ends with the Islamic Republic still in control of the country, its resources, and what weaponry it still has, it will pose an even greater threat than it has in the past. The pitch to Trump is that he has an “historic opportunity to remake the Middle East.”

There are many reasons to doubt the veracity of the report. The “sources” for this potentially explosive piece of news are described as “people who have had conversations with American officials.” The Saudi government has explicitly denied the report as well. And the article itself lists a host of reasons that it would be against Saudi interests for the war to be prolonged. 

Unfortunately the article has been cited and reprinted widely, accepted by many as true, despite its shaky foundations. The Trump administration is feeling a lot of heat over both the lack of a clear American objective in the Iran war and the growing belief that this war is not about American interests at all but Israeli ones.

What has become clear three weeks into the war on Iran is that there are divergent interests among Iran’s adversaries, including the GCC states, the U.S., and Israel. Those differences directly impact the desire to prolong the war, as Israel desires, or quickly end it, as Trump seems to wish and that, despite the Times article, is likely what most of the GCC states want as well.

And then there are Iran’s own interests that it is seeking to defend through the remainder of the fighting and the negotiation to end it.  

How these interests get defined and met will determine the end of the war on Iran, but it is already clear that Israel holds the ability to disrupt any possible off-ramp the Trump administration and Iran may be currently looking for, and that Iran, not the United States, is the key actor who will frame the end of the war.

The U.S. and Iranian goals for the war’s endgame

Donald Trump’s fanciful tales about dealing with some mysterious Iranian leader whom he will not name may be lies, but they are also an indication that Trump is starting to realize what a mistake he has made and wants an off-ramp.

There are many obstacles to an off-ramp, mostly of Trump’s own making. But perhaps the biggest is that the U.S. is the only party looking for that off-ramp.

Many describe Iran as wanting to fight on until they believe they have inflicted “enough pain” to make the U.S. and Israel think twice about ever doing this again. But they’ve been more specific than that.

Iran has listed, in plain language, their conditions for ending the war:

• Guarantees that the war will not recur.
• Closure of all US military bases in West Asia.
• Full reparations to Iran by the US and Israel.
• An end by the US and Israel to all regional wars, including against all Iran-aligned groups.
• Implementation of a new legal system over the Strait of Hormuz.
• Handing over elements of ‘hostile media’ to Iran.

Obviously, some of those are more important than others, reflecting the possibility of negotiations. The guarantees against recurrence of the war are paramount, while the handing over of “hostile media elements” is an obvious non-starter meant as a negotiating item. 

The point though is that Iran has set a clear agenda: they intend to keep fighting this war until they can be reasonably confident that the U.S. and Israel won’t simply restart it in a few months, as they did after the 12-Day War last year. 

Israel and the U.S. have less clear agendas, and despite fighting on the same side, those agendas are not well aligned. 

Israel’s objective, from the start, has been regime change in Iran. But their broader strategy is to maintain a state of regional tension. The insecurity of Israelis is a valuable tool for both Netanyahu and opposition figures. It is of particular use to the current far-right government, but it remains desirable for ostensibly less radical figures like opposition leaders Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot, or Yair Lapid. 

The U.S. has been necessarily vague about its goals, frequently shifting them. When Trump is most interested in an off-ramp, he goes back to the mantra of “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Although we can’t know for certain how the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, views the nuclear issue—and the U.S. and Israel have certainly given Iran much more incentive to pursue a nuclear weapon—the fact that Iran’s conditions don’t include anything about a nuclear program is an indication that they are still prepared to use this issue as the bone to throw to Trump so he can spin his defeat as a victory to his followers.

The inclusion of a new set of rules governing the Strait of Hormuz is a sign that Iran is willing to compromise on that issue as well. 

But at least for the moment, Trump is continuing to make an issue of Iran’s missile program, which has been the key feature of Iran’s ability to stand up against the Israeli-American attack. It is, of course, also the biggest concern for Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbors. 

But Iran is unlikely to give much ground on this point, as it will ultimately be the final guarantee that Tehran has to deter a future attack. It will be this point, along with a willingness to compromise on the Strait of Hormuz (which Trump has already indicated he would do) that will decide when Iran is willing to make an agreement with the United States.

Israel as the loose cannon

The problem then becomes Israel. 

The inclusion of the point about wars against “Iran-aligned groups” does not refer only to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but that’s the main subject of that condition. 

For Israel, the campaign against Lebanon is a long term project. They have effectively cleared most of the populace out of Lebanon south of the Litani River, displacing well over one million people. Most non-combatants who stayed have done so out of necessity; they can’t leave. And Israel has severed the connections to the rest of Lebanon by bombing bridges, stating that the displaced people will not be allowed to return for the foreseeable future.

Beyond that, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is already pressing for Israeli settlements in southern Lebanon, backed by his far right supporters. 

In other words, Israel has no intention of leaving Lebanon, and that means the war there would continue indefinitely even if the war on Iran ends. Iran has made it clear it will not settle for that.

Trump will need to rein in Israel if he wants to end the war, in both Iran and Lebanon. He could, of course, simply stop fighting Iran and leave Israel to his own devices, shrugging his shoulders and pretending this was not all of his own making.

And that is what Saudi Arabia is probably most afraid of.

If there is even a crumb of truth to what the Times reported on Tuesday about MBS’ messages to Trump, that would be it.

While Israel cannot sustain the massive bombardment of Iran without American support, it can fire long range missiles, as it has several times in the past, or carry out limited, targeted strikes. The war would be fought on a lower scale without the American giant taking part, but it would still be fought.

Would Iran continue to retaliate against Gulf countries if Israel were attacking it on its own? We can’t be certain, and neither can the Saudis, but it seems more likely than not.

Ultimately, Israel wants to see Iran destroyed as a force in the region. That means toppling the Islamic Republic and that can probably only be done by turning Iran into a failed state.

That is not what the Saudis and the other Gulf states want, regardless of the veracity of the Times report. They will still have to live next to Iran, and they don’t want it to become a source of radicalism like Syria has been. 

That’s not what the United States wants either. Even Trump recognizes the need for stability in the region when this war is done. That is true enough that he seems, at least at the moment, to have resigned himself to giving up on the idea of regime change.

With no off-ramp in sight, Trump is probably going to escalate the war, continuing to double down on the failed bet that enough force will lead to greater Iranian compromise, if not capitulation. But an off-ramp is what he is seeking.

The Gulf states do not want to see an American pullout that leaves Israel and Iran at each other’s throats with them in the middle. Nor are they anxious to see an Iran that can rebuild its military capacity, with the experience of surviving a large-scale assault by the regional military superpower and its global superpower patron. 

Even less palatable is an emboldened Israel seeking its next target, which is likely to involve either Türkiye or Qatar, given Israeli rhetoric. 

The Gulf states are seeing every day why they pushed so hard to avoid this war in the first place. It is even more complicated for them because the U.S. has nothing to gain here and its partner, Israel, has an agenda that, whether the White House understands it or not (and it seems they don’t) isn’t just outside of American interests but very much counter to them.