Donald Trump’s claim that he knew nothing about Israel’s attack on Iran’s main gas field suggests that significant tensions exist between the US president and Israel over how best to prosecute their joint military campaign against Iran.
Ever since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury nearly three weeks ago, questions have been raised about the precise nature of the cooperation between the US military and its Israeli counterpart on the prosecution of the military campaign.
While Trump has suggested his main priority is to destroy, once and for all, Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal, the Israelis, who have dubbed their effort Operation Roaring Lion, appear determined to wage their campaign until regime change has been achieved in Tehran.
To this end, Israel’s Mossad intelligence service has ruthlessly targeted key figures in the Iranian regime, with Israel said to have been heavily involved in this week’s assassinations of Ali Larijani, Iran’s national security chief, and intelligence minister Esmail Khatib.
There have even been reports of Mossad agents directly calling Iranian police officers and threatening to kill them, in an attempt to secure defections. Leaked documents and recordings have revealed a wide-scale Israeli effort to scare lower-ranking officials in the hope of enabling a popular uprising in Iran, while also assassinating senior regime figures.
By contrast, the US military has mainly been targeting Iran’s nuclear and military sites, especially the country’s ballistic missile launch pads that have been used to attack neighbouring Gulf countries. While Trump has indicated he would like to see the war ultimately result in regime change in Tehran, he does not appear as committed to such an outcome as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has specifically said that he wants Israel’s military attacks on Iran to result in regime change.
One crucial difference in the prosecution of the war by the Americans and the Israelis has been an unwillingness on the part of the Americans to target key Iranian infrastructure, especially its energy sector, with Trump saying he does not want to inflict unnecessary suffering on the Iranian people.
