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According to President Trump, the primary goal of the war is first and foremost to force Iran to sign a nuclear agreement that would dismantle its nuclear capabilities or, alternatively, put it years away from completing the program. A worthy goal by all accounts, but far from easy to achieve.
Another goal of the war – more difficult to attain – is to exert military pressure that, combined with the renewal of the internal uprising, might ultimately lead to the overthrow of the current regime in Iran.
Israel – the junior partner in the war – added two more objectives to the war: to severely damage the ballistic missile array launched from Iran towards the Israeli home front and to continue to weaken Hezbollah in Lebanon following its enlistment in the military campaign against Israel.
Israel’s achievement in gaining full United States participation in an aerial military attack on Iran looked very impressive in the early days of the war, but a scenario in which the campaign becomes drawn out and more complicated could ultimately cost Israel dearly in terms of American support in the post-Trump era. The best way to reduce these and other long-term risks to Israel is to strive for as short a war as possible, and focus on achieving a nuclear agreement that is as long-term as possible.
Keeping wars as short as possible, reducing their frequency, lowering the costs in human lives, and containing damage to the Israeli economy – this approach was always fundamental to Israel’s security policy. At least, that is, until the current term of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The limits of air power
Evidence that aerial strikes do not always succeed in fundamentally changing a strategic situation can be found in the “12-Day War” in June. At the end of the first Iran war, the two leaders – the same ones now spearheading this second campaign – declared “unprecedented” achievements in terms of damaging the nuclear program and the ballistic missile stockpiles threatening Israel’s home front. In both cases, the assessments turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
Despite the use of the world’s heaviest bombers on Iran’s nuclear sites, the pre-war status quo was largely maintained, and Iran was not stripped of its ability to develop nuclear weapons. The US representative in negotiations for a new nuclear agreement, Steve Witkoff, tells us that “the Iranians boasted that they had enough material to build 11 nuclear bombs.” They say they have 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels within 3-4 weeks, and that they insist on their undisputed, incontestable right to continue enriching uranium. Thus, Iran was a nuclear ‘threshold state’ on the eve of the war in June and remained so even after the “severe” blows, according to Trump and Netanyahu, inflicted during that war.
In the field of ballistic missiles, it appears that Iran has managed to restore most of its missile arsenal in the 9 months since June 2025. The IDF estimates that at the beginning of the current war, Iran had about 2,500 missiles, about 500 fewer than the number of missiles it had at the start of the previous war, and in the eight months that have passed since then, Iran restored its production capabilities to “dozens of ballistic missiles per month.”
Why a quick end to the war serves Israel
The obvious conclusion is that the United States and Israel should strive to end the current war in Iran as soon as possible, provided that the Iranians agree to return to the negotiating table with the Americans and freeze their nuclear program for as long as possible.
It is important to note in this context that the nuclear agreement that President Barack Obama formulated in 2015 – after two years of negotiations, and to which the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, China, plus Germany, also signed – was a good one for its time. The Iranians fully respected the agreement, and in the early years, allowed full access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
After his election to office, Prime Minister Netanyahu convinced President Trump that the US should unilaterally withdraw in 2018. Following the Americans’ withdrawal from the agreement and the renewal of sanctions against it, Iran also violated the agreement and, after some time, positioned itself as a nuclear ‘threshold state’ whose distance from nuclear weapons is a political decision by the Supreme Leader, with a period of about a year until the first bombs are assembled.
At this point, it is difficult to predict how the joint aerial campaign being waged by the United States and Israel against Iran will end. Prolonging the war is clearly in Netanyahu’s domestic political interest ahead of the Israeli elections, but it is completely counter to Israel’s long-term security interests, and the lives of Israeli citizens who are sheltering in protected areas in the hope that Iranian missile fire will not harm them.
There is room for optimism. Thanks to Trump, Netanyahu was forced to end a failed war in Gaza for two years, the prolonging of which cost some Israeli civilians held hostage in Gaza their lives. It was a war that could have been ended many months earlier with the same military results.
I hope that, as with the US president’s firm decision to force Netanyahu and Hamas to end the war in Gaza and release the hostages, he will also strive to end the campaign in Iran, mainly because prolonging it would be harmful to him politically. It is clear to everyone that the decision to end the war is not at all in Netanyahu’s hands, but in Trump’s.