The War on Iran: American Interests First, Israel as Instrument — Not Leader
Policy Paper by Hamada Faraneh, Progress Center for Policies
Executive Summary
The prevailing narrative frames the American war on Iran as a response to Israeli pressure and the Zionist lobby in Washington. A deeper reading of the evidence, however, reveals that this narrative captures only part of the picture while obscuring its essence. Israel was not the primary driver — it was the most convenient instrument for executing American strategic interests that had already taken shape long before. The war on Iran fits within a comprehensive American campaign to preserve unipolar hegemony in the face of three rising rivals: China, Russia, and a Europe seeking its own strategic autonomy. Understanding this equation is a prerequisite for any sound assessment of where the regional and international landscape is headed.
Introduction
In a world where motives intertwine and narratives multiply, distinguishing between the driving factor and the facilitating factor is an analytical necessity, not an academic luxury. To argue that Israel drew the United States into a war Washington did not want is an exaggeration that conceals the reality that the American decision-making apparatus — with its four interlocking institutions — does not simply follow the wishes of an ally, however formidable that ally’s influence may be. More accurately, Israel provided the moral cover and the operational instrument for a war Washington had been seeking a pretext to wage at a strategically opportune moment.
Part One: The Architecture of American Decision-Making — Against the Myth of the “Singular Presidential Decision”
The war on Iran cannot be understood without grasping the composite nature of decision-making in Washington. The American president, whatever the extent of his authority, operates within an interlocking institutional environment encompassing Congress, the military establishment, and the intelligence agencies — institutions with entrenched interests and independent strategic visions that cannot be reduced to the person of the president, nor to the pressures of external lobbies.
President Trump launched the war in two phases — the first in June 2025 and the second in February 2026 — while holding a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress. Yet this majority would have availed him little had the war not aligned with the interests of the military and intelligence establishment. This alignment is the true key to understanding the war, not Israeli incitement alone.
Part Two: Iran in the American Strategic Equation
Iran occupies a dual role in American strategic calculations. On one hand, it is a dependable partner of China and Russia, reinforcing their regional weight and softening the impact of Western isolation; on the other, it is a rising actor seeking to deepen ties with Europe in ways that could erode Transatlantic solidarity around the Western consensus on sanctions and containment. By weakening Iran or dismantling its system, Washington strikes this equation at multiple points simultaneously.
This war fits within a broader American strategy for countering three escalating challenges to unipolar dominance: Europe, where Germany and France aspire to lead a march toward strategic independence from Washington; Russia, the more direct traditional rival, currently mired in an attritional war in Ukraine; and China, the more dangerous economic competitor, which avoids direct military confrontation while leveraging its incremental economic ascendancy. Within this triangular equation, the war on Iran offers an opportunity to drain the support network upon which China and Russia rely in a region of acute strategic sensitivity.
Part Three: Israel — Instrument, Not Leader
The relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv, viewed through an American strategic lens, rests on an asymmetric equation — despite the outward appearances of close alliance and the rhetoric of equal partnership. From Washington’s perspective, Israel is less a classic ally than an operational extension and an executive instrument in a region where the United States has found direct action prohibitively costly in political and moral terms. Israel is the heavy club that strikes where Washington cannot strike, and the arm that reaches where the Pentagon cannot extend itself without inflaming American and international public opinion.
This is not to diminish Israel’s genuine influence within American decision-making institutions — in Congress, in media and financial circles, and in think tanks. That influence is real, documented, and consequential. The crucial distinction that many analyses overlook, however, is that Israeli influence facilitates and accelerates what Washington already wants — it does not impose on Washington what Washington does not want. When the two wills converge, Israeli pressure appears capable of moving mountains; when they diverge, Israel finds itself facing a hard ceiling it cannot breach, regardless of how powerful its lobbies may be.
This logic is clearly evident in the behavior of the Trump administration, which provided Israel with unprecedented political and military cover — from recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital and endorsing the annexation of the Golan Heights, to adopting the Israeli narrative of territorial expansion, to direct participation in the war on Iran and supplying Israel with qualitatively decisive weapons systems. Yet these accumulated Israeli gains were not a bribe from Washington to a dependent client state. Rather, they expressed a genuine convergence of interests at a specific strategic moment. Trump did not grant Israel what Israel requested; he granted it what he himself needed to advance his broader strategic agenda in the region and against the great international rivals. Accordingly, the war on Iran is not an Israeli victory over American policy — it is a point of convergence between interests that do not always align, and that have, in this moment, aligned with rare completeness.
Part Four: Consequences of the War for the Structure of the Regional Order
The war on Iran has produced structural shifts in the regional landscape, which may be summarized across four axes.
On the balance of regional power: Iranian strategic weight — which had served as one of the counterbalancing forces against Israeli-American dominance — has been diminished, redrawing the map of influence in favor of the Gulf states and the Israeli-Western axis.
On proxy networks: The system of Iranian arms, from Hezbollah to the Houthis to the Iraqi factions, has come under extraordinary pressure, though its capacity for adaptation has demonstrated that military instruments alone cannot eliminate it.
On the Gulf states: They have found themselves in an acutely sensitive position, having absorbed Iranian strikes on their territory while refraining from any direct military response — opening a serious internal debate about the adequacy of American security guarantees and the requirements of a regional security architecture.
On the Palestinian question: The Palestinian cause has become further marginalized within the regional equation, as the parties remain consumed by the Iranian file, and as the war’s outcomes may be leveraged to push through regional arrangements under the banner of “the day after.”
Conclusions
This analysis yields several core findings that regional decision-makers would do well to keep in view.
The war on Iran was not an Israeli victory over American policy; it was an expression of genuine strategic alignment between the two parties’ interests at a propitious regional and international moment.
The weakening of Iran does not necessarily produce regional stability — it may instead generate a vacuum that multiple actors with competing agendas will race to fill.
The Gulf states, which paid a price for the war on their own territory, now face the necessity of redefining the terms of their security partnerships in ways that secure them genuine agency in the equation, rather than the role of passive recipient.
The Iranian file and the Palestinian file cannot be disentangled within any coherent regional strategy — the regional arrangements being drawn by Washington and Tel Aviv aim at bypassing the Palestinian question, not resolving it.
Finally, China and Russia — having lost an important Iranian card — will not remain idle, and their adaptation to the new reality in the coming period will be read through careful observation, not through hasty conclusions.
