It’s been a long time since I’ve written about the Middle East, since I didn’t feel I had much to add to the conversation. But a visit with family and friends last week suggested that I may have something to offer. Not everyone is paying close attention.

      For the first time in months, I see a divergence between American and Israeli attitudes and aims—not of the governments, but of the peoples. A poll by Ha’aretz, Israel’s leading left-of-center newspaper, shows that 80 percent of Israelis are in favor of the current war, while in various polls about 60 percent of Americans are against their country’s involvement.
Ironically, this split reflects the one in my own mind. I consider this a necessary war for Israel but a war of choice—and not a good choice­—for the United States. I won’t try to parse or fathom Trump’s various self-contradictions, nor rehash the pros and cons of what has already happened.
But I wish that Israel would maintain its historical resistance to direct aid from American armed forces. This is the first joint operation ever. Israel doesn’t need such help (not the same as saying it can’t benefit from it) and the credibility of its independent deterrent force is in my view central to its safety, its future, and its support from America’s citizens. It is not healthy for Israel to have its vital interests wound up with the behavior of an erratic and unpopular US president.
Why do the vast majority of Israelis support the war, despite the risk level being much higher for them than for us? The answer is in the question. Just as the risks of fighting are greater, the risks of not fighting are greater yet. October 7, 2023 marked the culmination of decades of Iranian support for militias encircling Israel and explicitly committed to its destruction. This included Hamas (an Iranian proxy terror group), Hezbollah (a wholly owned Iranian entity), and other Iranian extensions that dragged Israel into a seven-front war.
Israel has dominated that war on all fronts, including substantial damage to Iran itself last June, with some American help. However, an unrepentant Iran began immediately to rebuild its hard power and in less than a year was able to murder tens of thousands of its own citizens who dared to protest its autocracy. And of course, it also began again to threaten Israel and all American interests in the region.
By contributing to regime change in Syria and drastically weakening Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel has already remade the Middle East, but as 80 percent of Israelis understand, the job is not done. Iran, with about ten times Israel’s population, 75 to 80 times Israel’s land mass, and a resilient autocratic military infrastructure, has resisted both internal rebellion and external attack. Experts say that even American boots on the ground—which I hope we won’t have—would probably not result in regime change.
But here we see another divergence, between the discouraged bewilderment of center-left cable news comments on America’s role in the war and the steady confidence of Israeli news reporting. This could be because the US effort is failing and the Israeli one succeeding, but I doubt that. It could be because a terrible American mistake killed 160 children. But I think it’s due to the two countries’ basic divergence in public opinion, and in particular the bumbling unpopularity of Donald Trump.
Yet the constant claim that the war goals are unstated is false.    Secretary Rubio and others have repeatedly cited the following: further damaging or destroying Iran’s nuclear program; eliminating its vast ballistic missile capability; undermining its support for terror extensions and proxies; and freeing the world from its threats to oil supply—among other aims. Rather than being denounced as equivocation, references to these various goals should be seen as the explanation of a multipurpose war designed to solve several Iran-caused problems, not one.
As for the demand that the US publicly provide a timeline for success or clearer, more restricted war aims, such announcements would give our enemies—Russia and China as well as their Iranian clients—our exact war plans, an act of utter folly in any war.
If you believe CNN and MSNBC, this will end (or rather, not end) in a protracted Iraq/Afghanistan-like debacle. If you believe I24News, the Iranian regime’s days of projecting terror are almost over. It is undeniable how much damage the two Western armies have already done in Iran, but equally clear that Iran’s bad-actor potential persists. Time will tell whether the liberal media or the centrist Israeli accounts are right about the outcome, but—despite liberal media fecklessness— my money is not on Iran.