Since the beginning of the war, there has been a clear division between the United States and Israel over who targets what, and nowhere has that been more visible than in the decapitation effort against senior Iranian officials.
From the first days of this campaign, the targeted killings – or assassinations – have been carried out by Israel. That does not mean the Americans have not been involved. The intelligence they supplied, for example, was critical in enabling the strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But there is still an important distinction between providing intelligence and carrying out the actual attack. That part is always done by Israel.
We saw this again earlier this week with the killing of the Iranian intelligence minister, with the assassination of Ali Larijani – who had become one of the regime’s de facto senior figures – and with the killing of the Basij militia commander. They were Israeli missions that fit into Washington and Jerusalem’s wider strategy.
The difference is not operational. If the Americans wanted to drop a bomb through a window and kill the person inside, they could. The question is where they are prepared to get their hands dirty and where, even in a war like this, they still prefer to preserve a degree of legal and political distance.
Israel has for decades maintained a doctrine that sees targeted killings as a legitimate instrument of national defense and implements that doctrine against terrorist leaders, military commanders, and, in this war, also against political figures. The United States is more cautious because it operates under different legal constraints.
That is why the division of labor in this war has become so exact. Israel carries out strikes that involve assassinations, while the Americans focus more heavily on the threats that continue to endanger regional allies, American bases, shipping lanes, and the global economy. This is why the United States, for example, is devoting so much right now to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
The war objective is to weaken Iranian regime
But despite those differences, the larger objective remains the same for both Israel and the US: weaken the regime and, if possible, create the conditions under which the ayatollahs can ultimately be toppled.
It is that objective that we should keep in mind even as the daily analyses and commentary question the strategy, how the war will end, or why it even started three weeks ago.
In America, that debate has become even sharper over whether the threat was ever really imminent in the first place. But ask almost anyone in the Gulf today, and they will tell you that it was. They are living within range of the missiles, within reach of the proxies, and under the shadow of a regime that the West, for years, preferred to manage, buy off, and contain.
That is why it is worth returning to the bigger picture, which is the one that too often gets lost amid the endless debate over tactics, messaging, and war aims. Because what is the larger story here, if not the possibility of what a weakened – or even toppled – Iranian regime could mean, not only for Israel but for the entire Middle East?
For Israel, the implications are extraordinary. Iran has, for the better part of half a century, been the central enemy of the State of Israel, not only because of its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, its investment in ballistic missiles, and the money it poured into proxies across the region, but also because of the ideology that it spread – dedicated to Israel’s destruction. It built a network focused on trying to persuade the world that Israel was the true source of the Middle East’s problems.
No one in the region believes that anymore, even if there are some useful idiots in Europe or the US who continue to promote this falsehood. Everyone in the Gulf coming under Iranian missile fire knows that the true obstacle to regional stability is Iran and that what is happening right now has nothing to do with the Palestinians or the so-called “occupation.”
If the regime is weakened to the point that the nuclear threat is removed, that the ballistic missile threat is diminished, and that Iran’s proxies are severed from the mothership, the entire strategic landscape shifts. Hezbollah is isolated, Hamas is weakened, and the Houthis in Yemen are vulnerable.
None of that would mean instant stability, and it would not mean that Israel would suddenly wake up in a peaceful neighborhood. But over time, if the regional balance shifts in a meaningful way, Israel will have the strategic space to begin dealing more seriously with the long-term issues that continue to fester at home.
That includes the Palestinian conflict, which remains whether we choose to ignore it or not. A stronger and more secure Israel would be in a place to more seriously deal with it. A region without Iran would give the country the ability to focus on the domestic issues that determine the country’s strength no less than war: the education system, the healthcare system, the transportation system, the quality of governance, and the broader question of what kind of society Israel wants to be.
It would give Jerusalem the ability to focus more on how to integrate Arab Israelis into society and how to really draft the ultra-Orthodox into the IDF and get them to share the national burden.
The regional signals are already there. Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic envoy to the president of the UAE, said this week that additional Gulf states will move closer to Israel after the war. This is because Israel and the Gulf stand together on the same side of the same fight. The old myth about Israel being the root of all instability in the Middle East has simply disappeared.
In the end, this is what this war is about. It is about an opportunity to dramatically alter the reality that has defined this region for generations. It is about the possibility that something foundational can change – not in a utopian sense and not immediately but in a real way that will reshape the Middle East for years to come.
That is why, despite the very real flaws of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, they deserve credit for recognizing this moment. Both men have shortcomings, and both have made mistakes. They could have, for example, done a better job explaining why this war was needed, especially after declaring victory back in June.
But that only reinforces how significant this moment is. Despite the poor messaging, Trump and Netanyahu recognized the need to act now and how this opportunity could not be missed.
And so, yes, we should ask the hard questions – about the war aims, about the exit strategy, and about what success will look like. But while we argue over those questions, we should also stay focused on the scale of change that may be before us and how dramatic it would be, not just for Israel, not just for the Gulf, and not just for the people of Iran.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at JPPI, and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His newest book is While Israel Slept.