Leon Hadar
The conventional wisdom in Washington holds that the United States and Israel share a unified strategic interest in confronting Iran. Politicians on both sides of the aisle recite it like a catechism. The think tanks reinforce it. The defense establishment operationalizes it. But conventional wisdom, particularly in the Middle East, has a remarkable track record of being wrong—and this case is no exception.
Let us be precise about what each party actually wants, because imprecision in foreign policy is not only the cause of intellectual failure but also the expense of blood and treasure.
What Israel wants is the elimination—not the containment, not the negotiated limitation—of Iran’s nuclear program and, increasingly, the weakening or collapse of the Islamic Republic itself. For Israel, this is existential calculus. A nuclear-armed Iran, in the Israeli strategic mind, represents an intolerable threat to its physical survival. Israeli leaders have said this clearly and repeatedly, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. They want the United States to fight this war fully, decisively, and at whatever cost is required to finish the job.
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