Name: Is the alliance cracking between the two strategic partners? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-20T17:08:34.000Z
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Are the US And Israel on the same page when it comes to Iran?

We're going to be talking about all of this with Aaron David Miller, a former Middle east negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Are the US And Israel fighting the same war?

Bottom line, Hannah, thanks for having me.

Is frankly, there is much more that unites them, that divides them, occasional friction perhaps, but

The US probably has not had a strategic partner literally in a major military enterprise since the end of the Second World War.

Okay, Aaron, we're going to come back to you in just a moment.

But first I want to show you guys that same question that Aaron just answered was put to America's top intelligence official said no.

The objectives that have been laid out by the President are different from the objectives that have been laid out by the Israeli government.

So two allies fighting a common enemy with different objectives, how does that even work?

Again, we can see through the operations that the Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership.

The President has stated that his objectives are to destroy Iran's ballistic missile launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability and their navy, the IRGC navy and mine laying capability.

The director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard there.

Well, those differences were on full display when Israel attacked part of the world's largest natural gas field on Thursday.

It targeted Iran's South Pars gas field and energy facilities in Assa Luya.

Iran then retaliated by striking the Ras Lafan liquefied natural gas hub in Qatar.

This is the world's largest complex of its kind and processes gas from Qatar's so called North Field in the Persian Gulf.

Well, earlier in the war, Trump was reportedly angered by Israeli attacks on Iranian fuel depots.

These pictures from early March show one of those depots on fire in Tehran.

According to one theory, Trump is concerned that strikes like this on critical infrastructure could cause Iranians to rally around the regime.

That could also be why the president didn't take too kindly to this latest Israeli strike.

Iran is heavily dependent on gas and uses it to generate about 80% of of its electricity.

Trump took to his social media site Truth Social to get something off his chest.

He wrote Israel out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle east has violently lashed out at a major facility known as the South Pars Gas Field in Iran.

A relatively small section of the hole has been hit.

The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, so the US Was kept in the dark, according to the President.

Hours later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya Netanyahu gave a press conference and said, America and Israel are acting together with great determination.

He then outlined Israel's three main goals.

One, removing the nuclear threat, second, removing the ballistic missile threat.

And third, this means creating the conditions for the Iranian people to grasp their freedom to control their destiny.

Okay, Aaron, help us work out what's really going on here.

You advised both Republican and Democratic Secretaries of state, and

you're now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

So you know what you're talking about here.

The goals that we just heard Netanyahu outline, are they in line with the American strategy?

Mirza, let's unpack the several clips that you played.

First of all, it strains credulity to the breaking point to assume that centcom, that has been coordinating military strikes with the Israelis, were not aware of the strikes in the South Pars gas field.

I think the President is willfully dissembling here.

the United States knew about it and acquiesced in it.

That may not have been the case with the earlier strike against the Tehran refineries.

So I think the President, frankly, is covering number two, when Chelsea Gabbard lays out what she believes to be the three core American objectives.

If you look at the President's statements over the course of the last three weeks, we're now in the third week of this war.

The US in messaging has wandered all over the parking lot.

Partly, he's talking about creating conditions for regime change.

He wanted to play a role in directly selecting the next Supreme Leader.

And frankly, I think the reason I'm relatively confident that they're both on the same page, even while they may articulate different objectives, is that the President has said repeatedly that we've won.

We've obliterated all of the objectives that Chelsea Gabbard outlined.

And if that is the case, particularly in a war of choice, not a war of necessity, why is the war continuing?

And the war is continuing because there is another objective, which is to do as much damage, create as much dysfunction, as much fracture and chaos for this regime as possible in the hopes I think the Israelis have been very clear and unmistakable about this in the hopes that somehow, in some way, if these strikes continue, the regime will fracture and break, not necessarily change, but

be so profoundly weakened that they can no longer control the streets.

I think that's a very interesting point that you make there because Tulsi Gabbard said earlier that Israel's goal was to remove the Iranian regime.

Do you really believe that it's no longer an Israeli goal?

I think the Israelis are waking up and smelling the coffee and have come to the conclusion that it may be harder than they thought.

And I'm not entirely persuaded that Israeli intelligence shared the Prime Minister's assessment that if, in fact the Israelis strike long and hard enough, that somehow the regime is going to collapse.

And again, collapse is not regime change.

Collapse and weakness and fracture is just that.

If we're talking about a transition to another regime that is not dominated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, that's a whole other order of magnitude.

I see very little possibility that that is the case.

So if in fact all of our objectives, the US Objectives, have been completed, why in fact, is the war continuing?

And it's continuing, in my judgment, partly because the President's war of choice has now become a war of necessity.

What was a U. S. Iranian war has now become a major global catastrophe.

Donald Trump cannot end this war, giving the Iranians that kind of leverage and the capacity to impose that kind of cost.

This war is going to go on for a long time, and

the next phase of it clearly has got to be an effort which the American military can do to open the straits with or without our allies, and

So I think we're talking here weeks more.

And the Israelis, by the way, the Israelis don't have the same kind of constraints, nor do they suffer the same sorts of costs, nor are they indebted to the Gulf states who, frankly, right now, if you ask me, who are the two biggest losers, Three biggest losers in this war.

One is the civilians, obviously, who are caught up in it.

The winners are Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu.

And I mean, with all that in mind, now, do you think, at least for the next few days, days or weeks, is there a clear US Goal?

I think the goal now has got to be to figure out a way to relieve the pressure on the global oil market.

And I don't see any way that you can negotiate that.

If Donald Trump tomorrow got up and said, we're done, we won, and

basically stopped, I think most Americans and most people who are watching this would breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The problem is the Iranians aren't going to let Donald Trump out of this war.

They want to continue to impose a cost, and

they also want to make it unmistakably clear that the Americans try this again, there'll be an even greater cost and a greater price to pay.

So, again, I think we're in for weeks, weeks more if we're lucky.

And, I mean, Netanyahu has now come out and said that the war may end sooner than people think.

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