How to Save the U.S.

In 2015, as the United States negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran—an agreement Israel was not a party to—we argued in Foreign Affairs that Israel and the United States should pursue a parallel agreement to ensure that any U.S.-Iranian deal would be durable and aligned with Israeli interests. Israel and the United States shared the same goal—preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—but differed over threat perceptions, historical trauma, timing, and tolerance for alternatives to diplomacy, such as sanctions, covert action, and airstrikes. A parallel agreement would help create a unified front and coordinate responses if Iran crossed any redlines. In the end, however, Israel and the United States never made a pact of their own. The consequences were severe. The JCPOA became a source of friction between the U.S. and Israeli governments and created the sense among people in Israel and Gulf Arab countries that the United States had discounted their security. It was politically vulnerable from the moment it was signed. The deal temporarily restricted parts of Iran’s nuclear program, but it did not stop Tehran’s ballistic missile buildup or its support for proxies. Key provisions were set to expire after just a few years. And Israel and the United States never jointly prepared for the possibility that Iran would stop complying with it, which Tehran eventually did after the United States unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018. Altogether, the lack of Israeli buy-in around the JCPOA created the conditions that put Iran, Israel, and the United States on a collision course a decade later. In many ways, the current moment resembles the lead-up to the 2015 nuclear deal. Once again, Tehran and Washington are engaged in nuclear talks. And once again, the United States is at risk of offering Iran great relief in exchange for relatively little—much to the chagrin of Israel and certain Gulf countries. The U.S.-Iranian memorandum of understanding reopens the Strait of Hormuz, stabilizes energy markets, suspends the war for another 60 days, and creates a diplomatic channel to keep negotiating. Yet it does not resolve the core disagreements that produced the crisis in the first place: Iran’s nuclear ambitions, missile programs, and support for proxies. The negotiations could thus freeze the battlefield while strengthening Tehran’s hand. The memorandum, after all, grants Iran the time, money, and legitimacy needed to reconstitute while deferring real resolution for another day. Israel and the United States must therefore do now what they failed to do in 2015: get on the same page. That means they need to forge their own deal about what an acceptable nuclear agreement would look like and coordinate their responses, should negotiations with Iran fail to produce an agreement. Otherwise, the blood, treasure, and prestige both countries have spent fighting Iran and its proxies might all be for naught. BAD COP, RELUCTANT COP From the start, Israel and the United States have had different Iran war aims. For Israel, the Iranian threat is existential. The country will not accept an Iran that has nuclear capabilities, a shield of ballistic missiles, and a regional ring of fire controlled by a regime that openly calls for Israel’s destruction. Israel’s war against Iran was meant defensively, to prevent a repeat of the slaughter on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 200 more hostage, or even a repeat of the Holocaust in Europe in the early 1940s. In Israel’s view, the only way to guarantee its safety was to replace the Iranian regime with a government that was not hostile to Israel and would give up Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as its efforts to destabilize the region. After the Iranian regime was weakened by U.S.-Israeli strikes in June 2025 and by mass protests in January 2026, many Israeli leaders concluded that a deeper political transformation in Tehran was possible. By the time the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began in late February, Israel’s goal for the war was regime change, even if the government did not say so publicly. Washington took a less audacious approach to the war and never committed the resources that it would take to foment regime change. Although Israel was willing to absorb the economic burden of a prolonged Gulf war, the Trump administration was not. Washington also made a series of errors that made victory unreachable. The Trump administration failed to plan for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and never developed an adequate response to Iranian threats against critical infrastructure in the Gulf. It failed to communicate to ordinary Americans the war’s objectives and the amount of resources it would take to achieve them. Finally, the administration failed to recognize that Lebanon could be used as a central means of pressure against Tehran, treating it instead as a separate issue. By restraining Israel’s response to Hezbollah, the United States therefore deprived itself of leverage over Iran. It would have been better for Washington to let Israel play the bad cop, preserving American diplomatic flexibility while making clear to Tehran that escalation through Hezbollah would carry direct costs. In the end, however, Israel’s overly ambitious objectives did not match the Trump administration’s lukewarm commitment to fighting a tenacious rival. The new Iranian regime was ready to suffer enormous pain and proved it could impose a steep economic cost on the United States. Washington thus conceded, and Iran’s regime emerged emboldened. In fact, it appears that a more radical and vengeful faction of the country’s elite, dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has taken the reins in Tehran. The Israeli government, for its part, placed too much faith in the idea that airpower alone could catalyze regime change. In doing so, it ignored the historical lesson that regimes can be successfully changed only through occupation—as in Germany after World War II and in Iraq in 2003—or by an uprising of the people. KEEP UP THE PRESSURE Right now, the central task for Israel and Washington is to prevent the 60-day window established by the memorandum from becoming a period of recovery for Tehran. That begins with denying Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz. The United States should therefore maintain a large naval presence in the Gulf, preferably under a broad coalition of regional and European partners, to stop disruptions to shipping. The coalition must also expand intelligence collection, maritime patrols, and missile defense coverage to ensure that the Houthi militia in Yemen, which is allied with Iran, doesn’t close the Bab el Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the United States and its allies should use the temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz to replenish oil reserves, restore military stockpiles, and harden Gulf security infrastructure against missiles, drones, and cyberattacks. Washington should quickly establish a permanent regional defense system in which U.S. partners in the region integrate their early warning systems with one another under U.S. Central Command, eventually developing into an effective integrated air-defense architecture capable of countering Iranian missile and drone threats. U.S. partners in the region should also coordinate the cyberdefense of energy infrastructure. As they prevent Iran from putting economic pressure on the rest of the world, Israel and the United States must keep economic pressure on Iran. Tehran’s desperate need for money is a source of leverage that should not be squandered. Any future sanctions relief should therefore be gradual, reversible, and conditioned on verifiable Iranian concessions. Iran should not receive major payouts in exchange for vague promises. If released funds are used for missiles, proxy forces, internal repression, or IRGC networks, they will have merely subsidized the next round of fighting. Currently, a provision in the memorandum of understanding allows Iran renewed access to some frozen assets; this should be narrowed and conditioned on the full implementation of Iran’s commitments under the memorandum of understanding. As long as Iran remains in breach of those commitments, the Trump administration must insist that banks, businesses, and individuals across the region halt transfers to Iran. To make sure such pressure has maximum effect, Israel and the United States need to increase cooperation. The two countries should immediately revive high-level interagency working groups so that they can hash out the details of the next phase of the cease-fire before leaders squabble publicly. These groups should focus on maintaining a credible military threat against Iran to prevent provocations, building a joint intelligence mechanism to detect and prevent the reconstruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, coordinating sanctions enforcement, and developing a shared plan to defend Gulf infrastructure and maritime routes. Israel and the United States will continue to disagree on certain matters. By identifying those areas in advance, they can preserve pressure on Iran, avoid public rifts, and deny Tehran the opportunity to exploit gaps between them. THE SAME PAGE American and Israeli leaders can advance their joint goals—to prevent a nuclear Iran and the resurgence of Iran’s regional axis—by signing a framework that defines what they will do both during the 60-day window and afterward. Such a framework should include an intelligence campaign designed to detect any progress on Iran’s nuclear program, combining Israeli excellence in executing operations and cultivating human sources with U.S. satellite and financial intelligence. Israel and the United States could agree to a structured process for assessing Iranian decision-making, sanctions evasion, and nuclear and missile activity. This would also help ensure that intelligence is evaluated professionally and consistently, especially during periods of political pressure or military escalation. When evidence of a violation emerges, the two countries should be able to quickly assess it and coordinate a policy response. Any U.S.-Israeli parallel agreement should also include an “if-then” matrix in which the two sides agree ahead of time on how they would handle Iranian violations. If Iran, for example, blocks nuclear inspectors, moves enriched material to military custody, or rebuilds hardened nuclear facilities, the United States should reimpose sanctions. If an Iranian proxy attacks Israel, U.S. forces, Gulf energy infrastructure, or international shipping, Israel and the United States should target not only the proxy but also the Iranian command, logistics, and financing architecture behind the attack. A U.S.-Israeli agreement would not be a favor to Israel. Under a U.S.-Israeli agreement, the two countries should also establish the parameters of an Iranian nuclear deal they could live with. Israel should not reject diplomacy with Iran as a matter of principle; it should oppose only an agreement that leaves Tehran with the capabilities, resources, or time needed to rebuild its nuclear program. The United States should guarantee it would sign only an Iranian nuclear deal that includes the removal of all enriched material from Iran, zero enrichment capacity, intensive inspections, no sunset clauses, and a mechanism for rapid access to suspicious sites. These standards are admittedly demanding, and Tehran has long resisted them, but they are imperative. A U.S.-Israeli deal would not be complete without a long-term U.S. commitment to providing Israel with military aid. Israel desperately needs to replenish munitions, air and missile defense capacity, long-range strike capabilities, and pre-positioned U.S. stocks. Over the past few months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he plans to make sure his country no longer depends on American assistance. But his approach should now be reconsidered. A restored Israeli military would enable the United States to reduce its own footprint in the region without weakening deterrence against Iran or U.S. diplomatic efforts. But that does not mean the kind of aid Washington provides should stay the same. In fact, in the long term, American military assistance should shift toward the joint research, development, and production of advanced weapons, including next-generation missile defense interceptors, potentially under Trump’s Golden Dome initiative. Even more important is the need for joint investment in a technological alliance that preserves American superiority in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, energy, semiconductors, and critical materials. This alliance should be established under a U.S.-Israeli memorandum and create a trusted ecosystem between the two countries, deepening cooperation among their private sectors, universities, and research institutions. This would produce a new model of partnership: one based not on patronage but on the shared power of each country and the strength of the alliance between them. BACK TO SQUARE ONE? It is in the U.S. interest to align with Israel through an agreement. The war demonstrated the value the United States derives from Israeli knowledge, infrastructure, and operational capabilities. A strong Israel reduces the chance that the United States itself will have to use force to pursue its regional goals. A U.S.-Israeli agreement would therefore not be a favor to Israel. It would be a way to preserve the gains of the war, share the burden of enforcing a deal with Tehran, and improve the credibility of U.S. commitments in the region. If left unchecked, Iran will use the 60-day window established by its memorandum to exploit the daylight between Israel and the United States and rebuild the capabilities it needs to threaten the region—undermining the most important achievement of the Iran war. Israel will always prefer to work with Washington, but given the scale of the Iranian threat, Israel cannot depend on an ally to defend its own citizens. A bad U.S.-Iranian deal would not automatically mean war. Israel, however, would be forced to act by itself should Iran pursue a nuclear weapon or should Hezbollah rebuild its military infrastructure or return to the border with Israel. With or without the United States, Israel’s intelligence apparatus will need to keep penetrating Iran’s highest ranks. It will need to remain capable of striking the country from far away, expand its missile defenses and civil resilience, quietly deepen coordination with Gulf states, and expose Iranian sanctions evasion. Israel has the right to use military force in self-defense if its redlines are about to be crossed. For Israel, acting alone would be harder and riskier. But it is better than doing nothing. The country simply cannot allow diplomacy to become the cover under which Iran rebuilds capabilities that threaten Israel’s survival. You are reading a free article Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. - Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives - Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles - Unlock access to the Foreign Affairs app for reading on the go Already a subscriber? Sign In