America Should End Israel’s War on Iran—Not Join It
By Daniel C. Kurtzer and Steven N. Simon - June 18, 2025
Since
launching its military operation against Iran last Friday, Israel has
dealt a devastating blow to the country’s nuclear program, its ballistic
missile arsenal, and its military leadership. But Israel is unlikely to
be able to fully destroy Iran’s nuclear program by itself. It does not
have the bombers or heavy ordnance it would need to penetrate the
fortified, underground Fordow enrichment facility. It has also evidently
avoided striking fuel-storage facilities for fear of unleashing a
public health crisis.
The United States has the aircraft and
so-called bunker-buster bombs to cripple Fordow. That means that the
outcome of the war will depend as much on decisions made by U.S.
President Donald Trump as it will on further Israeli airstrikes. Israel
has urged the United States to join the war, and if Trump decides to do
so, Iran would almost certainly suffer a strategic defeat serious enough
to push its nuclear capabilities back years and conceivably threaten
the viability of the regime—which would quickly become a U.S. goal,
owing to the logic of escalation.
But Trump should not enter the
war as a combatant on Israel’s side. The United States does have an
interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. In 2015, it
secured an agreement with Iran that would have blocked the Islamic
Republic’s quest for that for at least a decade, if not longer.
Washington believed that negotiating an outcome in which Iran had a
stake would be a more durable solution, and much less expensive than
opting for war. Israel did not agree withthis approach, nor did Trump.
In
2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, an act that
facilitated Iran’s impressive accumulation of highly enriched uranium.
It is no more in Washington’s interest now than it was in 2015 to go to
war for a result that could be achieved with far less risk through
negotiations. That means that it is not in the U.S. interest to go to
war to neutralize Fordow militarily, either, and it would be a mistake
to do so. If Israel is determined to substantially damage Fordow, the
Israel Defense Forces could do so by sending troops to Iran or by making
it impossible to enter the facility or relocate centrifuges there.
Achieving either goal, however, would be tricky and costly, and it is
understandable that Israel would want to outsource the job to the
Americans.
But subcontracting the Fordow job would put the United
States in Iran’s sights. Iran would almost certainly retaliate by
killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United
States to reciprocate in an iterative process. Soon enough, the only
targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime’s
leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change
business—a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be
involved any longer.
U.S. involvement would pose risks for the
president’s political agenda, as well. To avoid both the international
and domestic dangers, it is incumbent on Trump to develop a strategy
that brings the war to an end by ensuring that Iran cannot immediately
reconstitute its military nuclear program and allows both Iran and
Israel to save face. This won’t be easy, but it can be done. And the
U.S. president needs to act strategically if he wants to save any
portion of his substantial investments in Middle East peace—and prevent
the war from incapacitating the United States’ ability to meet other
consequential challenges in Europe and Asia.
OBSTACLE COURSE
For
days, the Trump administration failed to display any coherent strategy
toward the war. Then, on Tuesday, Trump debuted much more hawkish
language, calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” threatening to
kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and using “we” when describing
Israel’s attacks. What he has not acknowledged, however, is that if the
United States actually joins Israel’s aerial campaign, the Islamic
Republic has threatened to strike American targets: for example, naval
assets in the Arabian Sea and U.S. military and diplomatic installations
along the Arab side of the Gulf. Trump is preternaturally cautious
about taking military action, and even the prospect of U.S. casualties
on these ships or bases—and opposition from Gulf monarchies who will
become targets themselves—will give him pause. But Iran’s conventional
response options are dwindling fast, and more direct U.S. involvement
would likely lead Tehran to undertake asymmetric actions—terrorist
attacks—against Israelis, Jews, and Americans worldwide.
Influential
elements of Trump’s MAGA base, such as the broadcaster Tucker Carlson,
are already warning him not to reverse course on his “America first”
policy. These supporters do not want him to supply Israel with arms, let
alone send U.S. forces or aircraft to fight in the Middle East
alongside Israel. Trump has pushed back against these critics, but they
are not conceding the point; a cadre of Republicans in Congress are also
counseling restraint. And once his conservative opposition senses
broader public support, the free pass Trump has enjoyed from
congressional Republicans may well be revoked on other issues important
to him. If a rancorous debate breaks out over Middle East policy,
Republican discord could, in particular, threaten the passage of Trump’s
signature “big beautiful bill.” And it would revive concerns about the
United States’ military adventures in the region.
Even if the
Trump administration helps Israel incapacitate the Fordow facility, it
will be immensely difficult to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to stop his military campaign before he is convinced that
Iran’s nuclear program cannot easily or quickly be reconstituted. In the
past, Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies have estimated that after
intense attacks against Iran’s key nuclear facilities, the Islamic
Republic could reestablish its program in about a year. Netanyahu has
talked about destroying the program entirely, but in the absence of U.S.
intervention, he has not defined a realistic and realizable way to
achieve that goal. It is thus unclear whether even a medium to long-term
disabling of Iran’s nuclear program would satisfy Netanyahu.
END RUN
Trump’s
best option, therefore, is to try to help bring the Israel-Iran war to
an end in a way that preserves what Israel has accomplished militarily
but also allows Iran to save enough face to return to negotiations. To
do this, he will need to mobilize a multilateral effort to keep
nuclear-related material out of Iran’s hands, develop a negotiating
strategy that takes advantage of the weakness that Iran has shown in the
recent fighting, and conclude a credible agreement that effectively
ends Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapons capability.
All this will
be far easier to propose than to achieve. If Trump puts outright
pressure on Israel to stop its aerial strikes, Israel’s supporters in
both U.S. political parties will rise in protest, imperiling the rest of
his political agenda. But if Trump attempts to simply sit the war out,
it will grind on with unpredictable consequences. Iran may descend into
civil war or societal collapse, creating a terrible humanitarian crisis;
at the other end of the spectrum, an extended war of attrition would
expose the combatants to costs that will be difficult to recover in the
foreseeable future—and prolong Israel’s efforts to draw the United
States into the conflict.
Until now, Trump has combined tough
rhetoric and threats with the demand that Iran return to the negotiating
table and accept a deal that excludes any uranium enrichment on Iranian
soil. This bob-and-weave approach will not be enough. Much more precise
U.S. diplomatic intervention is required even as the Israeli aerial
campaign maintains pressure on Iran in the background. Only a determined
American president can pull off this complex, coercive diplomatic
effort.
First, the president’s senior military and intelligence
advisers need to engage with Israel and seek agreement on a battle
damage assessment that would judge whether enough damage has been done
to Iran’s nuclear program to justify stopping Israel’s attacks. This
assessment would factor in the Israeli assassinations of key Iranian
military leaders, nuclear scientists, engineers, and administrators, as
well as the damage inflicted on infrastructure. The fact that even
future Israeli strikes are likely to leave Fordow’s centrifuge halls and
Iran’s uranium hexafluoride storage site more or less intact will make
this a difficult conversation. But the Trump administration must
persuade Israel that Iran’s capabilities can be adequately hobbled
without destroying Fordow or continuing its attacks indefinitely.
Trump's current bob-and-weave approach to Iran and Israel will not be enough.
Second,
Trump must work with Netanyahu to define an end goal for the war that
can be achieved quickly: a significant and specific measure of
destruction of Iran’s existing nuclear facilities and stockpile.
Netanyahu’s goals, thus far, appear much broader—the total destruction
of Iran’s nuclear program and, increasingly, regime change. Netanyahu
must be advised that he cannot expect U.S. support for a policy aimed at
regime change.
Third, with the help of U.S. allies in the Gulf,
Iran’s rulers will have to be convinced that accepting the bitter
chalice of greatly diminished access to enrichment is better than
economic strangulation, continued pounding from the air, and the
possible loss of control over their country. Trump needs to enlist
like-minded states such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to
commit to a sustained multilateral effort to deny Iran the new
nuclear-related equipment it would need to reconstitute its program and
sprint for a bomb. An all-out effort along the lines of Operation
Staunch—an embargo launched in the 1980s that weakened Iran’s hand in
its war with Iraq—would probably be required.
If progress can be
made on these elements of the strategy, the United States should then
draft a UN Security Council resolution proposing a cease-fire plan. The
plan must include verifiable conditions related to Iran’s nuclear
program, such as the immediate return of nuclear inspectors, removing
all barriers to those inspectors’ access to the facilities they seek to
examine, an embargo on the importation of components needed to
reconstitute the program, the immediate export of any enriched uranium
remaining in Iran, and a call to renew negotiations toward a nuclear
deal.
If negotiations toward a deal do resume, Trump needs to
take a realistic approach, accepting that his deal may end up looking
more like a strengthened version of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement than
something brand new. Insisting that Iran forgo enriching any uranium at
all on its soil—a stance Trump’s negotiators had taken after much back
and forth—makes sense at the outset of resumed talks. But it will be
very difficult for Trump to sustain that position given Iran’s
entrenched stance on enrichment. It will also be enormously difficult
for Netanyahu—who has exposed Israel to punishing Iranian missile
barrages with the aim of destroying Iran’s program altogether—to concede
both the survival of the Islamic Republic and any prospect of
enrichment in Iran.
One way to deal with this concern—a proposal
that is already on the table—would be for the United States to lead the
setup of a regional consortium for enrichment under strict supervision
by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such a solution could offer
Iran a face-saving way of obtaining low-enriched uranium for medical and
other benign purposes. And the presence of other parties, presumably
some Arab states, and the location of this consortium outside Iran would
go far in assuaging some of Israel’s concerns.
HOBSON'S CHOICE
This
diplomatic effort by Trump carries political risks. A major
multilateral push to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions will divert
intelligence resources important to other targets, especially China and
Russia, and probably necessitate a reversal of planned cuts to the U.S.
intelligence apparatus. And any nuclear deal with Iran that allows the
country to participate in uranium enrichment even outside its own
territory will require Trump to spend political capital with his base.
But these risks are worth it to avoid renewed war.
Israel’s
attack has already created a strategic shift in the Middle East. The
country has again proved that its intelligence prowess and military
dominance can redefine the region’s politics. Once this war is over,
Trump can turn his attention to a goal he has already articulated:
translating that strategic transformation into the normalization of
relations between Israel and Arab states. This is a task the United
States is best positioned to carry out.
But if Trump dithers—or,
worse, fully joins Israel’s war—he will destroy his ability to broker a
more peaceful Middle East, an aim he has repeatedly stressed is precious
to him. He must act, and in the right way, before Israel’s appetite for
regime change leads to another “forever war”—and before the logic of
escalation leads Iran to shift from launching missiles to launching
terror attacks, including against Americans.